Q&A with Meleta Buckstaff, PNB Costume Shop Manager and Costume Designer for Cracks
PNB Costume Shop Manager Meleta Buckstaff is designing the costumes for Rena Butler’s new work Cracks. We sat down with Meleta in the costume shop to talk about her designs for this new work, what exactly a costume shop manager does, and more!
Meleta Buckstaff in the PNB Costume Shop with designer Paul Tazewell, photo © Lindsay Thomas.
What was your journey to a career in costumes?
I grew up as a dancer. After college, I performed with Contemporary Dance Wyoming’s professional company. At CDW, most of the dancers are also instructors, and some do admin work. Because I had an interest, I worked on costumes. After that, I decided to pursue costuming more officially. I moved to Seattle to complete the costuming grad program at The University of Washington. Luckily, when I was graduating, there was a part-time job open here at PNB, and [former Costume Shop Manager] Larae Hascall hired me. For a while, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do costuming and stay connected to dance, but it has worked out organically.
What does a costume shop manager do?
Each ballet has its own costume designer. The shop manager’s role is to make sure that those costumes get made and work with the designer and the staff to create the best version of that design that we can.
On a granular level, I do things like creating the budget for our department, hiring all of the PNB staff, and contracting folks to build things for us when the workload is too big for our team. I attend fittings with designers and make recommendations based on the amount of time, budget, and effort that a request is going to take. When a designer isn’t here, it’s on my shoulders to be their representative and make the aesthetic choices that go with their design. When we re-stage a ballet, usually we don’t have the designer come again, so I’m responsible for making sure that it looks as close to the original as possible. If there are any changes, I make sure that they’re intentional and informed by the original desires of the creative team.
On a day-to-day basis, I answer emails, talk to people about schedules, attend fittings, and talk with our wardrobe team about how we’re going to take care of costumes. I do a lot of organizing, buying things, and I sew myself sometimes!
It’s a lot of talking to people. The shop assistant and I are a hub for questions like, “I need more of this fabric. Do we have some in stock, or should we order it?” or, “I think that I should finish the sleeves this way. Will you look at it with me? What do you think?” Wyly Astley our dyer asks questions like “Here’s what I’m trying to color match. Do you think it matches? I think it’s a little more yellow?” And, “How much more time do you want me to spend on this?”
Cracks costume in progress with costume sketch.
What were the inspirations for the costumes in Rena Butler’s new work?
Rena and I talked about her concept for the piece. It comes from her experience of having gone to Catholic school. She’s thinking about religion, worship, and the idea, “if you were following strict rules really closely, where would that get you? Does it lead to some sort of transcendence or not?” She had a pretty clear vision and requested that the design be based on a school uniform.
She wanted a cohesive, uniform look for the pointe dancers and flat dancers. Together, she and I talked about colors and styling. There’s a frame of reference for a Catholic school uniform, but there’s actually a lot of small detail choices that you get to make. For example: exactly how are you going to cut that skirt, how long is it going to be, and what color is it going to be? Getting to make all those decisions as the designer is fun.
Listening to the music made me think we should go with a really saturated color that matches the richness of the choral music. Rena and I were talking about images of a cathedral, stained glass, and the effect of light coming through. We narrowed it down to a warm, rich tone and eventually landed on a saffron orange color. I wanted to bring something different, and choosing an unusual color was a component of that. You can’t buy these costumes in a store, the color is special and unique to this piece.
I also wanted to bring something unexpected, something light and bright to the work. There are moments in the piece that have humor and lightness to them. It would be easy to go that dark and gloomy direction, and Rena and I both wanted to try and subvert that.
Do you want to speak to everything else that the shop is doing right now in the last month of the season?
We’re working on DIRECTOR’S CHOICE, which is this new Rena Butler creation, plus remounts of Nine Sinatra Songs and …throes of increasing wonder. We are making a few additional costumes for the two remounted works in cases where we don’t quite have the right size for a dancer.
We’re also working on Season Encore, which is relatively light because we’ve done most of the pieces recently. Emergence is a big piece, for example, but we fit it, did the alterations, and performed it six weeks ago.
In June, we’ve also got five new NEXT STEP pieces to costume, plus School Performance. School Performance features a piece for the Level VIIIs (a Balanchine ballet called Walpurgisnacht), a piece for the Level VII modern class, and the Professional Division’s performance of The Four Temperaments. All of that together is 18 different ballets in three weeks. It’s a lot, but nothing compared to other things that we’ve done this year. We’re looking forward to summer break!
Angelica Generosa, Meleta Buckstaff, and PNB Costume shop staff during a The Sleeping Beauty costume fitting, photo © Lindsay Thomas.
What’s your favorite PNB memory?
Creating our new production of The Sleeping Beauty this year was unforgettable. We take a full costume shop stretch and dance break in the afternoon, and during those last weeks, there were over 35 people in here altogether. It was so cool having all of that energy. There was so much to do. It was such hard work. It was great to look around and see that everyone was still really positive. Everyone was working together from our college intern, to our full-time staff, to all these over-hire folks. There were people who are brand-new and someone who’s been a draper for 50 years. It was very special.
