This cabbage butterfly flits about the broccoli leaves in her layered chiffon dance costume looking ever so much like one of Dracula's undead wives in the recent Texas Ballet Theater production at Bass Hall in Fort Worth. So delicate, beautiful, and evil, and ready to suck the life out of our spring garden. Fiendish...
Sitting in the box at the Bass, I turned around and whacked the nearly-snoring males of our party on their knees with my rolled-up program. Wake up, you village oafs, youths, and innkeepers! The undead wives are flying!!! D'that ever happen at your crypt?
"Flying by Foy," I learn, is the industry standard for theatrical flight rigging. That Peter Pan television special starring Mary Martin and Cyril Richard that I loved far more than brussel sprouts back in the 1950s was managed by Peter Foy.
Judanna Lynn's costume designs were perfect. Dracula's gorgeous batwing cape alone was worth the drive to Ft. Worth. I wish I knew more about the process of inspiration, research, design, and construction for it. The velvet and brocade costume weighs thirty pounds, and has a fifteen foot wingspan! The details are as luscious at the images of moths in Joseph Scheer's Night Visions, and as powerful as an evening at Austin's Congress Avenue bridge!
© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder
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