American Ballet Theatre // Whipped Cream
Tall Chocolate Chip Man and Hat, Gum Ball Girl, Wedding Cake Girl, Neapolitan Layered Cake Girl and hat, Cupcake kids and hats, Nicolo Master of Ceremonies and hat built by Euroco. Princess Praline tutu built by Cygnet Studios. Standing Yak and Long Neck Piggy built by Randy Carfagno Productions. Wedding Cake Hat built by Lynne Mackey Studio. 3 Liquor Bottles and Worm Boy built by John Kristiansen New York, Inc.
Eric Winterling, Inc., Parsons-Meares, Ltd.
The gum ball dress and the Nicolo costume were too large to be worked on in the main workroom; they each needed rooms of their own.
The Nicolo pattern was larger than our largest cutting table, so it got cut out on the floor of our biggest fitting room. After it was stitched together it was pinned onto a hula hoop as a makeshift frame and hung from the ceiling while getting all its candy stitched on. The candies were made on a variety of bases, such as: tree ornament balls, pillbox hat bases, mesh strainers and wreath foam rings.
At the fitting for Nicolo, he was so high that he didn’t fit under the ceiling beams!
The gum ball dress needed to be set up on its hoop skirt to place each gum ball on it in 3D. There are almost 200 gum balls on the skirt! It was a challenge to find a material for the gum ball bases that was light enough for a ballerina to wear and sturdy enough to last. They ended up being fabric stretched over plastic half-balls. The shop cats loved playing underneath the hoop skirt every day while the gum balls got stitched on!
Pictured: Scene from Whipped Cream. Photo by Gene Schiavone. Pictured: Scene from Whipped Cream. Photo by Gene Schiavone. Pictured: Misty Copeland with Pink Yak in Whipped Cream. Photo by Rosalie O’Connor. Pictured: Scene from Whipped Cream. Photo by Gene Schiavone. Pictured: Roman Zhurbin, Catherine Hurlin, and Duncan Lyle in Whipped Cream. Photo by Gene Schiavone.
