Ballet Series

I do "Wiki crawls" almost daily, starting on the main page of Wikipedia, and one day, under the "Did you know..." section, one of the articles listed was that "Tatjana Gsovsky, ballet mistress at opera houses in East Berlin, Buenos Aires and West Berlin, first choreographed ballets by Henze and Nono".

And for some reason, that got me to wondering--do ballets have designated costumes, the way that some Broadway shows do? You know what I mean--some characters you can get away with wearing anything that suits the character and time period, but even in the most amateur of productions, every Jesus in Godspell HAS to wear a Superman shirt, and Daisy Mae in Li'l Abner HAS to wear a polka dot top and cut off shorts, and Dr. Frank N Furter from Rocky Horror HAS to wear a black corset and pearls? I probably should have waited until I asked some dance people and got an answer, but instead, I started searching for ballet costumes in the colors the senshi wore, and, well, you get this.

Naturally, my first search was for a white ballet costume, and I found a beautiful picture of Sarah Lamb as Princess Odette from Swan Lake. When I saw the way the stage lights cast muted multicolored shadows on her white tutu, I decided I had to use watercolors to try to get that same dreamlike quality. Of course the scanner doesn't pick them up well, and it's even harder to shade with watercolors, but I think I made the right choice.
I found a perfect light blue tutu for Ami, never realizing that the model was in almost the exact same pose as the one I had found for Usagi. I didn't make the blue I used for my picture nearly light enough, however. And the paper got pretty rumpled, because I had forgotten my sketchbook the weekend I started this, so I grabbed a sheet of computer paper, and then had to transport it home on the bus.
Usagi as Princess Odette

copied pose

watercolors

3-23-14

Ami

copied pose

watercolors

5-4-14