Friday, Dec. 21, 2001 | 9:43 a.m.
When 14-year-old ballet dancer Ashley Naughton smooths her new, sparkling snowflake costume over her lithe body and fluffs the stiff, white tutu around her waist, she smiles.
"It's my favorite costume," Naughton said.
And unlike last year, or the year before that, she won't have to worry about a faulty hook or limp tutu when she takes the stage this weekend in the first act of Nevada Ballet Theatre's production of Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker."
That's because the E.L. Wiegand Foundation in Reno awarded a $250,000 grant to NBT last year to redesign the ballet company's staple holiday production with the opulence the 30-year-old troupe had always imagined.
The company used the grant to design elaborate costumes for its first presentation of "The Nutcracker" in the Rio's Samba Theatre.
"We desperately needed new costumes," Bruce Steivel, NBTs artistic director, said. "They (the costumes worn last year) were held together by string and tape. They were quite old."
"The Nutcracker" takes place in 19th-century Russia, a grandiose age, Steivel said.
The classic seasonal ballet tells the fable of a young girl, Clara, and her gift of a wooden nutcracker in the shape of a sturdy soldier. As dusk falls on Christmas Eve, the nutcracker soldier magically turns into a handsome prince who dances with Clara among snowflakes and sugarplum fairies.
Throughout the dreamy evening Clara is visited by a twirling Snow King and Queen, the formidable King Rat and myriad toys that dance beneath a giant Christmas tree. The fantasy takes place in icy St. Petersburg during the late 1800s.
"It's such an elaborate era and I've always wanted to see the opulence of that era reflected onstage," Steivel said.
Which is why Steivel has put his own spin on the 109-year-old ballet.
Most people might think of their first viewing of "The Nutcracker" as the traditional one.
In fact, when composers Lev Ivanov and Peter Tchaikovsky wrote their two-act version of the ballet in 1892, it was already translated from a tale by German writer and composer E.T.A. Hoffmann.
The 90-minute NBT production has been altered slightly for Steivel's vision of the time-honored musical.
After the prologue, dancers float into a ballroom in an embassy where Clara's parents have invited heads of state to relish in the Christmas spirit.
"It's very important and beautiful," Steivel said of the first acts' ornate, formal dance scene.
Steivel put the dancers in an embassy setting to explain the pinnacle dream sequence where Clara waltzes with soldiers and toys.
"Either it's a dream or reality," Steivel said. "I left that up to the people in the audience."
The details of the ballet lie in Steivel's rapt attention to each element of the play. For the last 10 years he has watched NBT's "The Nutcracker" from the audience to ensure that the ballet is a magical experience from that viewpoint.
"I've gone out there to see what everyone else is seeing," Steivel said. "I wanted it to be extroidanary and take them back in time."
To carry the audience back 100 years and achieve the luxuriant appearance of the clothes of the 19th century, Steivel turned to his friend, Russian-born costume and scenic designer Alexandre Vassiliev.
Vassiliev lives and works in Paris, where he has designed sets and costumes for the Theatre du Rond Point des Champs Elyses, the Studio of the Bastille Opera and the Lucernaire.
"I do lavish," Vassiliev said, describing his style. "I think it's very important to be lavish and unexpected."
Last year he was contacted by Steivel, whom he had worked with more than a decade ago in Hong Kong with a ballet company, to come to Nevada and create the set.
Before sitting down to design "The Nutcracker," from its backdrop to toe shoes, Vassiliev studied other shows in Las Vegas, such as Bally's "Jubilee."
"Las Vegas is a city that is used to seeing glamour and I understand that," Vassiliev said. "If you want to achieve something in Las Vegas you have to be above the standard."
To do that he chose fabrics such as silk, lace, tulle and taffeta to re-create the 19th-century clothing with a 21st-century flair.
Vassileiv chose the lush fabrics of the costumes for their texture as well as durability. Ballet costumes must be repaired almost nightly because of the punishment the dancers' seemingly effortless movements inflict on the threads of the fabric.
"To keep them you must repair the elastic, the hooks, glue on any decorations and sew sequins," Vassiliev said. "They (the dancers) do squats, turns. It can cost $250,000 a year just to repair the costumes."
The fabrics for the 180 costumes were handpicked and bought in Paris by Vassiliev with the quarter-million dollar grant from Wiegand. Vassiliev then shipped the fabrics to be handsewn in a factory in Lithuania, where he recently braved below-freezing temperatures to oversee the creation of each piece.
"Some people use glue to (attach) decorations," Vassiliev said. "But there is nothing stronger than needle and thread. These costumes will last a long time."
The beauty of the costumes and intense work that went into each is not lost on the young cast members.
Cast member Rebecca Brimhall, a 17-year-old junior at Centennial High School, has danced in "The Nutcracker" for the past three years. She said that the new costume felt fresh, glamorous and historical.
"There is a different attitude when you are dancing wearing the (new) costumes," Brimhall said. "They are very old fashioned and you feel like you are more in character."
Her 14-year-old dancemate Rebecca Raatz has been dancing in "The Nutcracker" for the past seven years.
She agreed that the new threads made the complex maneuvers that each dancer performs seem more elegant, but also that she simply felt pretty in the costly costumes.
"You can tell they spent a lot of money and they are just beautiful," Raatz said. "I think it also appeals to the audience to see the beautiful costumes onstage and the way we dance in them. I feel more confident (dancing)."
Naughton, Brimhall and Raatz each play a flower in the second act, "Waltz of the Flowers." The new costumes have brought the once-monochromatic scene into a bevy of colors, the dancers said.
"It's never been this colorful," Naughton said. "Before, we always wore green (flower costumes). But now there are four different-colored flowers. It's very bright when we are all together. It feels beautiful."
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