{black swan}

Black Swan was incredible. I highly recommend seeing it splashed across an enormous screen, and as RoRo pointed out, it's like being in the audience at the Ballet that unfolds throughout the story. With costumes designed by Amy Westcott, and the ballet tutus by Rodarte (the label created by the Mulleavy sisters), Black Swan is also a feast for the eyes. Here are some interview excerpts about the design inspirations...

“If I had imagined a dream film, this is definitely the one to sign us up for,” Laura said. “The big question was, how can you create a whole Swan Lake ballet to coincide with the modern set of this film?” But that wasn’t the only big question—the other was one few designers encounter: How can you make clothes that are ballet-friendly? “It was very technical, because everyone had to be able to dance,” Kate added. “For example, the crown—the demon Rothbart has a metal crown that’s made with horns, and the Black Swan has a metal crown in chrome. That was a big debate, whether they could wear them as dancers.”

But necessity was the mother of invention. The crowns made it into the film, where they’re chillingly dramatic in its final scenes—but chrome they’re not. The Mulleavys ended up making the Black Swan crown out of lightweight copper, which they then burned to achieve their desired effect. “The crown is so coveted because it is symbolic of getting the role of the Swan Queen in Swan Lake—it’s part of this whole thing of getting the role. When it was time to do the Black Swan, that more intensely had to be linked to this demonic, menacing idea, [so] using metal became more important,” said Laura (on set with Portman, below). “Technically it was almost impossible, but we made it work.”

As to be expected, Rodarte sought inspiration in some bizarre places while designing the ballet costumes for Black Swan. "We imagined him like a mechanical bird — his breast is even padded out like a bird," Laura Mulleavy said of the costume for Prince Siegfried, which features distressed velvet with a floral embroidered cheesecloth overlay. "It looks like a spider web's taken over him ... He's like a demon." Meanwhile, Odette's costume involves a flat, pancake-shaped tutu made of white angora wool, which looks like "tree branches growing [on the skirt]," she described. Which is not very sexy, but definitely not boring either.

"We had an affinity for the subject matter," noted Kate Mulleavy. "We had never done a film. ... This would be a dream job in terms of just getting to make tutus. But, then we had, I think, something that allowed us to add to access the psychology of the film in a different way, which was understanding the darker nature and more of the twisted kind of underbelly of that world."

eonnagata

Do let me introduce to you, the fascinating Charles Genevieve Louis Auguste Andre Timothee d'Eon de Beaumont, otherwise known to his friends as quite simply, the Chevalier d'Eon. Here he is below fighting a nice duel. No no, not the chappy with the well-defined buns of steel, but the strapping lady with the satisfying ability to brandish an epee!

I feel like most stories of transvestite knights involve a girl playing the role of man, so as to cross the constraints of womanhood and so on and so forth. But this dashing young man reversed this traditional set up. Working for King Louis XV and his 'Secret du Roi', the Chevalier appears to be the first to have used his ability to blur the sexes as a tool in commiting acts of espionage. Indeed, the true nature of his sex has remained unclear, despite an inconclusive autopsy.

This tale of a knight who spent the first half of his life as a man, and the second as woman (with a pardon and a wardrobe provided for by the French court no less), captivated the imagination of Robert Lepage. When the ballet legend Sylvie Guillem approached him with her long-time collaborator Russell Maliphant, Lepage leaped at the chance to explore the confusing and ultimately tragic story of the Chevalier d'Eon in a piece of dance theatre for Sadler's Wells: Eonnagata.

As a visual medium for the story, the trio were inspired by Onnegata - a Kabuki style of male actors playing the part of women. The strong imagery of Japanese theatre and the French court of the 1750's combined into a rich source to plunder for the designer Alexander McQueen. Starting with flesh-coloured suits with subtle suggestive padding in certain places, McQueen built up the layers of the characters and story. Using feather light silks for otherwise stiff male tailoring and the backlit kimonos as part of the set, his costumes were inspired and as much a part of the performance as the dancers. Another essential contributor was the lighting designer Michael Hulls, whose ability to manipulate shadows was integral to the illusions and pace of the piece.

It has been a longing of mine to see Guillem in action, and finally I was exposed to her endless grace and strength. A more fitting dancer for the role surely does not exsist!

All in all, an insight into the weird and wonderful twists of history and, well, the human body.