Halloween - Graveyard Cabaret

This year I was lucky enough to be asked to co-produce a Tim Burton inspired cabaret show for Halloween. I did a couple numbers last year in the Halloween show put on by the local Cabaret group the Kit Kat Club. While I was discussing ideas with them I mentioned that I had always wanted to do a Tim Burton inspired show for Halloween. Well the idea stuck and that's what we did.

And it was most excellent. Easily one of the best Halloween variety shows I've seen.

My favorite Tim Burton movies are Beetlejuice, Corpse Bride, Big Fish, and Nightmare Before Christmas (not that I don't love all of the others as well) so I started re-watching movies for inspiration. Here's what I came up with:

From Beetlejuice: 

There's the scene where Beetlejuice is in the miniature model of the town harassing the Maitland's and their caseworker Juno distracts him with a devil themed strip club: Dante's Inferno Room. Since we were doing a cabaret show I thought it would be awesome to do a dance like he might see in Dante's Inferno Room.

I found some awesome music - Take Your Skin off and Dance by Martin Martini and the Bone Palace Orchestra - and three of us put together a sexy devilette number.

Here are some pictures (most photo credits go to Jack Grace Photography):

You can see some of our awesome graveyard set in some of those.

From Corpse Bride: There was an awesome number by Bonejangles and the Bone Boys where the tell the story of how the corpse bride came to be. The song is called Remains of the Day.

I decided that I wanted to do a black light skeleton tap dance to this song. Unfortunately tap dance isn't my specialty and I wasn't able to do all the choreography myself, so I enlisted the expertise of my talented friend Aly Cardinalli for some help with the choreography. It also took awhile to find tap dancers - they are a dying breed.

Since it was black light we also had a ninja come in with some props here and there.

Pictures (photo credits go to Jack Grace Photography):

There's some ghosts in the background of the first picture and a veil, "the family jewels" and a "satchel of gold" in the second.

I had never done a black light number before and it was very interesting to do. I wish we had had more time to work on how we looked in the black light since the skeleton was only on the front part of the costume. There's a couple places where it was hard to see some of what we were doing.

Inspired by Big Fish: Since I had decided last year that there would be no Thriller this year I decided to do a group circus number to make up for it.

I found the most fabulous song by Vermillion Lies called Circus Apocalypse. It was awesome and creepy and the words were all about joining the circus, but you have to die first. Just perfect for a Tim Burton Cabaret.

So I put together a group and did a creepy circus dance with acrobats, clowns, a bearded lady, a strong man, lion and lion tamer, a knife thrower, a tightrope walker (me!) and of course, a ring master.

I made my tightrope walker costume - it's the only costume I made for this show which is very weird for me.

Pictures (photo credits go to Jack Grace Photography):

 

 

From Nightmare Before Christmas: As a group we sang a portion of This is Halloween to open the show. We were onstage with just flashlights so I don't have any pictures of that.

Our finale was to Jump in the Line by Harry Belafonte - which of course you remember from Beetlejuice.  I made some skull maracas for the finale:

We had a lot of fun decorating the stage and coming up with a set for the show. Not only did we have the lovely graveyard, but we also had a tree, a coffin filled with a skeleton orchestra (you can see them in the photo of the ringmaster and the strong man above), and a coffin entrance:

That's the tree next to the coffin entrance - it had a false back so you could through the coffin.

I also decorated some bottles to use a vases, and a vase:

 

 

The bottles were painted with spray paint then decorated with puff paint. The vase was just lined with puff paint - I had originally planned on making the lines straight, but that didn't work out, and I think it looks even better with the squiggly lines.

I also made what I am now referring to as "noddle plants" since they were made from pool noodles:

 

I cut out spirals from the noodles and shoved them into cross-sections of the noodles for the base. Then I spray painted them. On some I added some puff paint for extra color. I hot glued them together and had to hot glue the whole thing on a small piece of plywood because they were too light and didn't want to stay standing.

Apparently I didn't take any close up pictures of them completed. Here's some cropped out of other photos from the show - oops:

They were stuck in among all the tombstones in the graveyard:

It really was an awesome show.

Doll Costume

This year for Halloween, along with Thriller as usual, I got to do a solo ballet piece about a creepy doll. It was fun to be something other than a zombie for once. Here's the costume:

I made it using a pattern based on a costume from Mirror Mirror - which I thought was an ok movie, with absolutely fabulous costumes. Totally worth watching just for the costumes.

Here's the pattern:

Heads up if you plan to use this costume - there's a couple issues with the printed instructions so read them well before you start. The back of the pattern is also not very clear on which fabrics/notions are needed for which version of the costume you're doing. Also it says you need am 18" lightweight separating zipper for the bodice - totally not true. I ended up needing a 16" separating zipper.

Here's some in process pictures:

I used spiral steel boning on the bodice. It was my first time working with spiral steel boning and I loved it! I'd recommend taking the Sew Retro Perfect Bombshell Dress on Craftsy if you want to learn how to use it.

I changed the pattern a little. I shortened the sleeves and the skirt to make it more doll like.

Since I was supposed to be a little creepy and kind of old I distressed the dress a little. Usually I like to do discoloration with dye, but I made a poor fabric choice for that. My taffeta was synthetic and didn't dye so I used spray paint instead. It's best to use spray paint sparingly on fabric because it stiffens the fabric a little. If you are I'd recommend finding a floral spray at a craft store instead of regular old spray paint from the hardware store.

The fabric for the bow was a cotton begaline so it dyed marvelously. Have I ever mentioned that I love Giant Ass Bows? Well I do. I think they're hilarious.

Here's my makeup - there's lots of people who've done better doll makeup than me online, so look elsewhere for makeup instructions.

And once again here's the final look.

Decorated Pointe Shoes - Halloween Edition

One of my favorite projects that I've done are my decorated pointe shoes. They turned out really cool, but I've never really done another pair. I've started a couple, but never actually got very far. I did dye an actual pair for a costume in Chicago - Hunyak's circus costume was a silver tutu bit (seen here) and the actress was a ballerina so I dyed her pointe shoes silver.

For some reason I was suddenly compelled to do a Halloween version of decorated shoes. I love Halloween - as you may be able to tell from my multitudinous zombie posts. So I pulled out my RIT dyes and acrylic paints and here's what I did:

I think they are Griskos

I got a brand new pair of pointe shoes on eBay for cheap (didn't care about the size so I just went by price). I bent the shank a little to make them look less stiff and I took out the drawstring since it won't be needed. 

Dyes packets and mixed dyes

When I dye pointe shoes I take a little bit of dye, add water and paint it on like a water color. I try not to do too many coats at one time because the water will soften the resin that is keeping the shape of the box. Above are the colors I used: Black, Pearl Grey, and Navy Blue. I started off with just pearl grey.

One coat of Pearl Grey

Then I added some Navy Blue to the Pearl Grey mix (I just made the connection to Earl Grey - lol). I did a separate batch of Black for some gradation (below). I did several "coats" letting the shoes dry in between.

After several coats

I also used the Pearl Grey/Navy Blue mix to dye the inside. I may end up replacing the insole with something sturdier, which is what I did on my first pair.

Dyeing the Inside

Here's a close up of some of the gradient black. I think it gives it a very "halloween" look.

Closeup

Then (after letting the dye dry completely) I just used some acrylic paint to paint some creepy scenes on the box of the shoe.

Tree with headstone and Bats

Witch crossing the moon

Spiderwebs

The spiderwebs aren't my favorite. The box is much easier to paint that the softer parts of the shoe.

Ghosts and Bats

Spiders!

I need to do more to decorate the back half of the shoe, but I'm not sure what I want to do yet. I don't want to do scenic work like on the box, so I might go check out the Halloween section at Ben Franklin and see what they have.

I'll post an update when I've done more!!

Spongebob Squarepants Costume

In college I majored in physics and I minored in theater. Strange I know. Neither my physics professors nor my theater professors really got it, but I think the two compliment each other marvelously. Well, my theater minor included mostly costume classes: Costume History, Costume Construction, Clothing and Culture, and Costume Design.

I took Costume Design my senior year and during the fall quarter we had an assignment for Halloween to make a 3 dimensional costume that concealed our identity. At the time I was watching a lot of cartoons on cable because we never had cable when I was growing up. I watched Sailor Moon, Tenshi's Universe, Dragonball Z, and Spongebob Squarepants. So I decided to make a Spongebob costume.

I had a large box from a blanket I'd ordered online and it fit over me pretty well. I cut out arm holes and eye holes and painted. I created a 3-D nose out of yellow vinyl (my mother works at a sign shop and often gives us the leftover scraps of vinyl that they cut letters and images out of).

I paired the box with a white t-shirt and my khaki shorts and black shoes with white socks:



The costume was a little cumbersome to wear, and my costume class was at 8:30 in the morning so it was a little chilly to be walking around in shorts.

Zombie Ballerina

On to something recent.

For the past couple of years Maui OnStage has done a Haunted House at the Iao Theater for Halloween. This year they decided to add a pre-show of Michael Jackson’s Thriller to the mix. Since I enjoy both Maui OnStage and dancing I participated.

The dance is a lot of fun, but the style is a little tricky and can be a pain in the neck – literally. We did Thriller for each group that came through the haunted house. The smallest group had 2 people and the largest had over 20. Over 5 days across two weekends we did the 6-minute dance 97 times. I was one of 3 people who danced it every time (and I want a sticker!).

Since the whole production was a volunteer thing we had to create our own costumes. I decided to be a zombie ballerina. I had an old pair of pointe shoes which I painted with dye to make them look yuckier – it kind of looked like I kicked someone to death as the brown on the toes kind of looked like dried blood. The fact that they were old (a remnant from High School) turned out to be a bad thing in the end because they did not exactly hold up to 97 Thrillers.

The rest of the costume consisted of some old tights, an old tutu, and an old shirt that I dyed and distressed to look decayed and distressed. I had a lot of fun dying, and did so in a way so that the dye job was far from even.

The makeup was kind of tricky because they don’t sell good theatrical makeup on Maui – we all bought the cheap stuff at Wal-Mart. Also, the theater isn’t air conditioned, so it gets extremely hot and the excess amounts of sweat tend to cause the makeup to run. We had some good tips about setting the makeup, which helped a lot, but there was usually some reapplying necessary.