A Day in the Life of Costumer Sandra Woodall

Costumer Sandra Woodall believes that, in a perfect dance world, stage costumes and choreography would have a symbiotic relationship. “My experience at the theater [has taught me that] I like it best when the scenery and costumes and choreography are so interwoven that you couldn’t pull them apart,” she says. “The juxtaposition of things in a collaborative work inspires another layer of thinking.”

Having spent more than 35 years putting her distinct touch on more than 200 productions, Woodall has done her best to provoke thought on the part of audiences with her imaginative costumes and scenery, often inspired by her love of nature. From ghostly silhouette sheaths for A Midsummer Night’s Dream to delicate lace wings for The Nutcracker’s Mirlitons, Woodall’s creations have been featured on companies all over the world, including the Stuttgart Ballet, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the San Francisco Ballet, many of whom have also commissioned her as a set designer.

So what’s the method to her masquerade madness? DT sat down for a chat with the prolific designer to find out.

As Luck Would Have It
Woodall’s passion for fashion wasn’t always at the forefront; as a young child growing up in Oakland, California, she enjoyed sewing but aspired to be a visual artist. “As a child, I didn’t have the idea that I would go into theater and design costumes and scenery,” remembers Woodall, whose drawing and painting skills would nevertheless one day play a crucial role in her costuming career.

In pursuit of her artistic ambitions, Woodall attended the San Francisco Art Institute in the late 1960’s, followed by a one-year stint at the famed Louise Salinger Academy of Fashion. Through the school’s job placement program, Woodall was assigned to work at Goldstein’s, a now-defunct costume company that catered to the San Francisco Opera. Though she enjoyed the work, Woodall longed to be in the center of the action as she became more acquainted with theater production.

But what she calls “good fortune, good luck and fate” came into play when Cinderella came to town and its New York–based designer needed help with costume adjustments and alterations. The head of the opera house remembered Woodall from earlier interviews and offered her a job assisting the head of wardrobe.

“That was the beginning of my love for theater,” Woodall recalls. “I saw how I could apply all of my visual and fine arts training and I began learning how to see in theatrical terms. I feel very fortunate that I was at the right crossroads at the right time.”

Woodall describes those early costuming years as a “wonderful, thriving time for the dance scene in San Francisco.” One memory that particularly stands out was her involvement with building costumes for Balanchine’s Western Symphony, for which she had the opportunity to work with original costumes made by Madame Karinska, longtime costumer at New York City Ballet. “Seeing the beautiful construction and handling the costumes, I was exposed to the techniques that she used and was able to make replicas using those techniques,” Woodall says.

From Conception to Completion
Over the years, Woodall has developed her own distinct style and techniques while exploring motifs from the natural world. For example, while on a Fulbright scholarship in Taiwan, Woodall collected rare moths indigenous to the area, which she used as inspiration for costumes for Taipei-based Performance Workshop’s musical production of Welcome to Shangri-La. While designing scenery for SFB’s Death of a Moth, Woodall applied painstaking detail to create layers of material that, depending on lighting, alternated between transparency and the appearance of a rock fossil.

For Val Caniparoli’s South African–set Lambarena, Woodall used the veins of leaves as a starting point for the scenery. “When you see images of Africa, they have that beautiful quality of heat and shimmer,” she says. “The leaves acted as sculptural elements and broke up the horizon line.” For the costumes, Woodall hand-painted designs on woven chinty cloth, which she says “represents Africa in my mind.”

Her actual costuming process is as intricate as the beading and detailed hand-painting featured on many of her designs. For a full-length ballet, she spends anywhere from nine months to two years developing sketches. During this period, Woodall spends a great deal of time observing rehearsals and listening to pieces of music with the choreographer. “I can share the visual images [the music] strikes in me and the choreographer can share his or her movement responses,” she explains.

Another integral part of the costume development process is research, which, depending on the piece, can entail everything from exhaustive internet surfing to digging through ancient family photographs for period authenticity.

One extremely research-intensive project for Woodall was The American Nutcracker, choreographed by Kirk Peterson for the Hartford Ballet in 1997. Woodall had designed Peterson’s first full-length ballet, Cloudless Sulphur, for SFB almost 20 years earlier, and the two had discovered their shared love of all things related to biology and nature. Because Peterson’s version of the classic holiday ballet was set in the American West in the mid-19th century and rooted in nature themes, he knew he could trust Woodall to get it right.

“When the opportunity came along, Sandra was the first person I thought of,” says Peterson of Woodall, who spent two years researching the look of the costumes and scenery, drawing particular inspiration from Yosemite National Park. “She’s amazing with fabric, dyes and mixing colors to work as a theme from beginning to end. For The American Nutcracker, the costumes organically grew out of the natural places [in which the ballet is set].”

Woodall’s involvement doesn’t end when the meticulous design process is complete: Although her costumes are now built by outside vendors, she takes part in the fittings and consults in the costumes’ actual construction. (For years, Woodall ran a shop employing more than 30 seamstresses who executed her designs; the shop was closed in 1987.) “I like to give input about the lines on the dancer and the quality of movement,” she says. “Since I’ve had so much experience building costumes, I give plenty of time because I know how long it will take.”

Renowned in Her Field
This detailed approach has won Woodall the respect of companies and choreographers around the world. “Rendering designs is one thing, but sitting and hand-painting a costume is just amazing,” says choreographer Michael Smuin, who estimates he has worked with Woodall on at least 20 productions for both the Smuin Ballet and SFB. “I find her costumes very sexy. She knows how to dress women and highlight their movements.”

She’s also won a number of honors for her designs, including several Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Awards in Costume Design and four Isadora Duncan Awards for costuming by DANCE Bay Area.

Although Woodall has never had any dance training, she has a healthy appreciation for dancers and dance instructors, and she takes her role in the choreographic process very seriously. She believes that dance teachers and choreographers can get the best results from costumers by working together from the earliest stages of the work’s creation. “When the design grows together with the choreography, that creates the most successful piece,” she says with conviction. “Early involvement and allowing the piece to unfold produces the best collaboration.”

And, after all these years, she still gets a thrill out of seeing a work truly come together. “[As costumers,] we think of ourselves as architects for the body. We call ourselves builders,” she says. “When the piece takes on a life of its own, that’s when things start to get really exciting.” DT

Jen Jones is a freelance writer and website producer based in Los Angeles. Her website is www.creative-groove.com