By Carl Hoover

Tribune-Herald entertainment editor

Young dancers may dream of “The Nutcracker’s” Sugar Plum Fairy or Clara, the young girl whose Christmas Eve dreams come to life onstage, but for a costume designer, it’s all about what the dancers are wearing.

“It’s the ballet that you want to do,” said Baylor University costume designer Sally Lynn Askins. “Every costume designer wants to work on just one ‘Nutcracker’ in a career.”

Video: Baylor designer Sally Askins

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“The Nutcracker”

By St. Petersburg Classic Ballet Theatre and Waco Symphony Orchestra

Performance: 2:30 p.m. Sunday at Waco Hall.

Tickets: Now sold out.

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Sally Lynn Askins worked at her Waco home on costume designs for the St. Petersburg Classic Ballet Theatre's production of "The Nutcracker," using e-mail to discuss them with the Russian troupe. (Carl Hoover photo)

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Costume design sketch of the Nutcracker Prince by Sally Lynn Askins for the St. Petersburg Classic Ballet Theatre's production of "The Nutcracker." (Carl Hoover photo)

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Costume design sketch of Clara by Sally Lynn Askins for the St. Petersburg Classic Ballet Theatre's production of "The Nutcracker." (Carl Hoover photo)

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Costume design sketch of Rat King by Sally Lynn Askins for the St. Petersburg Classic Ballet Theatre's production of "The Nutcracker." (Carl Hoover photo)

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Askins has had that opportunity, and a Waco Hall audience will see her work Sunday afternoon when the St. Petersburg Classic Ballet Theatre of Marina Medvetskaya dances Tchaikovsky’s beloved holiday ballet, “The Nutcracker,” accompanied by the Waco Symphony Orchestra.

The ballet, in which a young Russian girl travels through a fantasy land of sweets, a rodent army and a handsome Nutcracker Prince, is a holiday tradition for many, and a sellout is anticipated for Sunday’s performance.

Askins, 55, may be as eager as anyone in the audience: It’ll be her first time to see her “Nutcracker” designs in action.

The opportunity came thanks to choreographer Peggy Willis-Aarnio, who trained at the prestigious Vaganova Ballet Academy, the teaching school of the world-famous Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia. Willis-Aarnio headed the dance program at Texas Tech University in the 1980s, where Askins taught costume design before coming to Baylor University in 1991.

The two had collaborated in 1993 on Willis-Aarnio’s “Rhapsody on a Love Theme,” set to Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini,” and her “Remember When?,” set to music by Gershwin, both of which the choreographer had created for the St. Petersburg Ballet.

So when Willis-Aarnio was preparing a new 2005 production of “The Nutcracker,” one employing a classic style that dated back to the original 1892 “Nutcracker,” she asked Askins to design costumes that would be sewn and constructed a world away by the Kirov Ballet’s costume shop.

That set in motion a process where Willis-Aarnio, now based in Panama City Beach, Fla., and Askins discussed costume concepts, then sketches of proposed designs were e-mailed to Russian designers for their suggestions. Askins secured the help of a Baylor associate professor of Russian, Mike Long, who translated e-mails in and out of Russian for the costumer’s benefit.

“Without the advent of the electronic age, we wouldn’t have been able to do this,” she said, adding the process sometimes had a strange irony to it, such as when she created a traditional folk costume for the Russian dancers in the ballet’s second act. “Here I am, an Irish-American in Texas drawing a picture of a Russian costume for a Russian to build,” she said with a laugh.

Dancers’ costumes have slightly different requirements than those crafted for actors on a stage. “You want to show bodies and movement of the bodies to their best light. You want to emphasize the sculptural qualities of the body,” explained the costumer. “It’s a combination of the period look for the dance, yet making them practical for movement.”

That means lightweight fabrics that move and flow with the dancer; no excessively long skirts, sleeves or capes to interfere with movement; cotton tights to minimize distracting reflection from stage lights; and material durable enough for repeated wearing and cleaning.

Ballet tradition dictated some designs, such as when shorter tutus were appropriate and when longer, romantic tutus were called for, such as those worn by the Dancing Flowers. “Nutcracker” tradition dictated others.

“Your Nutcracker has to look like a nutcracker,” Askins explained, adding most are done in reds, blues and whites — as is her own nutcracker, on which she based her design.

Her favorite, personal costume touch? The crown of golden mice that the Rat King wears as well as his coat, patched together from small scraps of gray velvets and rich charcoal fabrics as one imagines mice tailors might have done.

The Waco costume designer created some 20 different designs for the St. Petersburg company, though budget limitations have meant only about three-quarters of her costumes have been built.

“Nutcracker” audiences from the East Coast, where the St. Petersburg company toured this fall, to Ireland, Germany, Sweden, Finland and Russia have seen Askins’ designs. Scores of young Waco dancers will wear them, too: 90 local ballet and dance students will participate in Sunday’s “The Nutcracker.”

At least Waco Hall’s backstage personnel won’t have to go through what Askins witnessed when she saw “Rhapsody on a Love Theme” at St. Petersburg’s Pushkin Theater in 1994: Costumers waiting backstage, needle in hand, to stitch dancers into their outfits so seams would lie flat on the dancers’ bodies.

“We use hook-and-eye tape here,” she said.

choover@wacotrib.com

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