Their work has to be seen to be believed. Since their costumes will be used for years, if not decades of repertory production, they are built with the sturdiness and quality usual to serious opera and ballet companies the world over. What is unusual is that because the staff is so huge, and the type of garments made are so predictable ("White" ballets after all are always in white tutus, opera costumes often are done to designs first rendered before the revolution, or shortly after), the workers develop specialties that render them truly world-experts in the niche's they occupy. For example, stitchers are not generic. There are stitchers who work in men's wear only, women's wear only, hats only, appliqué work only, soft scenery only, or semi-soft sculptural scenery only. Ditto for cutters. Every pair of shoes is also made, by hand, on the premises of a separate building. The result is that the workers are capable of being both fast and accurate in their specialty, and they can produce their costumes flawlessly for a price that gets foreign companies to beat a track to their door.

While I was there they were making plans to start marketing their hand-made Pointe shoes abroad under their own label. Apparently they have been selling their shoes domestically to other companies for years without any label, and suddenly realized they had a product that could export, thus filling the gaps left from dried up government subsidies. Expect to see their work in dancewear catalogs in the coming years, or better still, see it on stage when they tour to your nearest major metropolitan area.

At the time this photo was taken (July 1997) they were making in the shops five complete sets of costumes for the Nutcracker (note blue snowflake tutus above) to be sent to Japan in preparation for the Kirov Ballet's tours to the five major cities of Japan. These costumes will be parked in their respective theatres for the five years the Kirov has contracted to tour each of them.

All the edges on all the tulle in all the tutus is cut into pinked scallops by this huge, hand cranked rotating pinker. I actually own two old Victorian industrial crank pinkers, and have seen others (they are wonderfully handy for certain things) but this is about four times the size I've yet seen. The crank wheel has about an 8" diameter, and it can zip through the tulle at an amazing rate. This one likely has been doing so since Pavlova was still taking lessons.

The Mariinsky's shop is full of handy old equipment like this. They have dress forms of a huge assortment of 19th and 20th century bodice shapes, like this one for an 1890's corseted figure. Because the shops have been in continual use for the last century, they have all the original equipment, plus succeeding time periods of equipment to satisfy their needs.

They also have access to their storage, which houses costumes from the original productions of a number of designs. This hat, shown here in the appliqué department is from a production of Boris Godunov first designed in the 1920's. This worker is laboriously matching specially dyed and pulled swatches of fabric with the 1920's hat to make a new version with identical markings. Interestingly, some of the fabric she is putting on the new hat is taken from a swatch-box from the original production. This particular type of gold organza isn't produced any longer, but, conveniently, the Mariinsky has some old pieces. Another swatch was made by hand painting fabric with a hot pink aniline dye, as the original fabric was as well. This attention to detail ensures that productions designed by long-dead designers for long dead singers and dancers still have the exact look that the designer originally approved.

In yet another department, this one The Millinery Department., a group of specialty stitchers sew on more Nutcracker items and freshen up a few hats from the new (in Spring 1997) production of The Betrothal in the Monastery (AKA The Duenna). The workers use ordinary wire rather than hat wire, and hand stitch a thread covering over the wires on items like tiaras that have the wire as the only under-structure. Several specialty industrial machines are also used for joining together wire and buckram frames.

Here, the hat cutter is preparing to cut out a duplicate of the shako on the right from Nutcracker, while a weird turban from The Betrothal ... sits on the left. Behind her is one of several shelves of hat forms available to the Millinery Department.

Here is yet another shelf of hat forms, which as you can see, does not provide enough shelf space for the multiplicity of forms left on hand. Some of the forms, stretchers and other hat equipment are even older than the theatre. I asked them if they ever found that they didn't have a form that they needed for one of their productions and I was told that they did regularly (due to larger modern hat sizes), and that if they needed one that they did not posess, they simply order one made by the carpentry shop in another building, and it is brought to them.

Generally, however they can make do with a slightly smaller hat and then stretch it since they have 19th Century wooden stretchers like this one and 1920's electric metal stretchers (see photo above) that can pull their hats to the proper fit. Among the rare and wonderful equipment owned by the millinery department are a tiny set of puff irons (upper left) used to curl silk into flower petal shapes, and to curve brims edges without curving the rest of the brim.

The area with the most amazing equipment, however, is in the steamy dark basement of the building, where the dyers work. Here in the hall outside the main dye room are huge barrels of powdered aniline dyes. These dyes are the most powerful and electric in their colors, but dangerous to work with. Dyers and scenic painters who work with them have little protective equipment, but get higher "danger pay" for the probable health risks involved. As a curious holdover from the days of Soviet shortages, this pay includes extra milk rations.

The main dye room is about as hot and wet as a steam bath, despite a wall of open windows. The water is so prevalent that the whole floor has simply been covered with a wooden grate to prevent slipping, and to keep the workers feet semi-dry. In this photo you see two 3'x6' steel vats on the left that share a movable fabric rotator. The fabric being dyed is sewn into a huge loop before dyeing then rotated round and round through the vat mixture by being mechanically pulled by the rotator above.

While the one vat is in use, the other vat is filled up with large pipes. Nearby, other fabric is getting rinsed out in two converted claw foot bath tubs that have been plumbed to turn them into continuously flowing fountains of fresh rinse water.

Here another machine (about 5' high) rotates another fabric loop through a mixture in the bottom of the machine. This rotator has flanges on the rotating wheel so that it simultaneously stirs the mixture at the bottom even as it pulls the fabric to the top and over.

Here a huge washing-machine like vat takes smaller loads that spin around in it's rotating drum.

After dying and rinsing fabric is automatically drawn through this steamer that heat sets the dye and irons the fabric by shooting steam through it with hot rollers.

The shoe department, too, has all sorts of specialty equipment, and specialty workers. The shoes are made in a separate building where cobblers sit at low benches and hand make every shoe the same way they have done for the last century. Every Pointe shoe used at the Mariinsky, plus hundreds of other shoes for dancers across Russia is made here in this fashion. The day I was there they were busy making boots for Boris Godunov that looked like normal 17th Century boots, but whose soles could be curled up easily in one's hand like a soft ballet slipper. These boots would go on the dancers in the opera so they could leap about the wooden floor of the Mariinsky without sounding like a herd of elephants.

Other departments, like the wood shop here, located in yet another building, support the work of the costume department, by making specialty equipment when needed---like the hat blocks mentioned above.

The Metal Working Shop is another case in point. While most of their work consists of stamping, welding and riveting scenic and props items, there is also a machine there that individually stamps out brass military buttons with the old Romanov eagle insignia (now the symbol of the Russian Federation). This metal worker, as you can see is producing them in the hundreds to decorate the chests of the opera choruses.

Kirov/Mariinsky Links:

• The Kirov Ballet of St. Petersburg, Russia

• St. Petersburg Times - Ballet News

• THE KIROV BALLET
  Kirov-Mariinsky Theatre, July & August, 1997 Schedule

• ST. PETERSBURG OPERA & BALLET SEASON