Saturday, April 17, 2010
Shoe designs get to the pointe of 'Swan Lake'
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: "In honor of its 40th-anniversary presentation of 'Swan Lake' this weekend, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre invited local artists to turn pointe shoes into works of art."
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2 comments:
This was a really cool idea, and a great way to integrate the work of local artists into the show. It would have been interesting if the artists had also been allowed to make the shoes. (I can already imagine some interesting ways one could go with making the shoes out of metal.)
The pictures of the shoes weren't overly impressive though (aside from the bottom pair). They looked like a high school art assignment. This does remind me a little of Susan's Shoe project though. It would be interesting if the whole class were given one kind of shoe, and had to go from there.
I actually got to speak to the costume designer at the Benedum when I was at tech for In the Upper Room, and we were discussing all of the work that goes into creating a ballet. She discussed how many pairs of shoes a dancer would go through in a season, the process of getting them to just the right colour (she said she had to sharpie the pointes in the Twyla Tharp piece to the correct shade of red because there was no other means of doing it).
I now completely respect costume design on a whole new level, and these shoes are a fine example of all of the fascinating things you can do with such a simple object.
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