Photo By Graham Lienhart

Cincinnati Ballet's Diana Vandergriff handles labor-intensive Nutcracker costumes.

Clack! Clack! As I arrived at Cincinnati Ballet's studios one recent morning I witnessed something unexpected, a backstage secret: A petite ballerina sat just outside the entrance beating and scraping her satin pointe shoes against the pavement, manually breaking them in and quieting them for onstage wear.

From footwear to costumes, props to ornate headpieces, what dancers wear matters. Few possess more firsthand costume knowledge and experience than longtime Cincinnati Ballet Wardrobe Mistress Diana Vandergriff.

An essential asset to the company for 35 years, she runs the costume show: designs and construction for certain productions, repairs, rebuilding, alterations, cleaning, storage, organization and even rentals to other companies. In addition, Vandergriff and her team have re-created costumes from original sketches for important historical ballets such as Balanchine's Jewels and Leonide Massine's Seventh Symphony.

Vandergriff gave me a tour of the spacious costume vault housed in the basement of the Ballet's Over-the-Rhine studios. The building once housed an old brewery, so the high-ceilinged caverns are conveniently temperature-controlled. Crisp tutus are stored in huge cabinets with shallow drawers. Elaborately bejeweled and sequined costumes in all colors and designs imaginable hang high and low filling the cool space.

The sewing room's 10-odd machines and the volume of storage space provide initial clues that the costume realm is a far more involved and intricate operation than people might imagine. Vandergriff explains how the costumes have to be partially deconstructed to remove the tutus and other delicate parts before dry-cleaning. Then they must be reassembled and ready for possible rental.

Her team often needs to alter a single costume to fit the individual dancers appearing in different performances -- and fit this in between shows.

"People don't realize that you don't just go to the store and buy the piece you need to make it work," says Vandergriff. "They're surprised that there's this much involved backstage."

For instance, The Nutcracker, one of her busier shows, has over 250 individual costumes to contend with. Vandergriff mentions that The Nutcracker's Mother Ginger costume -- for the character on stilts with children scampering out from under the skirt -- contains some 88 yards of material, making it a challenging piece.

"You're talking big," she says.

It's not unusual for a ballerina's highly ornate costume to require a head-spinning 120 hours of labor -- not to mention the expense of yards of fabric, especially for tutus. Twenty-five years ago Vandergriff received rare training in tutu construction from Russia's Madame Karinska, who worked for New York City Ballet and perfected the modern-day tutu. In her estimation, Cincinnati Ballet is one of only a few companies nationally that constructs tutus in-house. Apart from training her staff in Karinska's techniques, Vandergriff is sworn to secrecy.

Vandergriff has always loved sewing. As a girl, she used to dull her mother's needles by running notebook paper through her machine with no thread, just following the lines. Graduating to real fabric caused her mother grief on one occasion. Vandergriff cut out a suit pattern on her mother's good linen fabric -- in the wrong direction.

"I know I probably shattered her world because I remember the look on her face when she walked in," she recalls. "She'd been saving that for something special for herself." Fortunately her mother was "cool" and supportive of her interest.

Family connections figure prominently in the Ballet's costume department. Vandergriff, a Cincinnati native who lives in the house she grew up in, was recommended for her first costume shop job (for Cincinnati Opera) by an aunt while they both worked for a fabric store in 1972. Vandergriff's daughter Laura, who also works for the Ballet, is a trained trim and detail-work expert. Another mother-daughter team works in the sewing shop, too.

The dancers think of her maternally.

"They call me Mama Di here," she says. "You're always the mother, settling the nerves." It's easy to imagine, given her even-keeled, patient disposition.

"Occasionally we have some drama," she says, smiling.

She exudes the steady sort of calm that's helpful in a crisis -- especially a costume one.

Vandergriff shares a near-disaster. During performances she and Laura each take a side of the stage for emergency strap repairs and the like.

"During Sleeping Beauty years ago, I was standing there watching the fabulous little possés and thinking something's wrong with her costume," she says. "I walked over to the stage and I'm seeing skin." (She drags her finger up the side of her torso indicating a bodice ripping).

"I knew that she was onstage with the exception of one turn where she came out and went right back on. There was no way to pin or stitch it. I turned around and there was white gaffer's tape and I got three pieces and put them together and went over." As she "came swinging around" Vandergriff quickly stuck the tape onto the white costume the dancer was about to come out of. The relieved dancer thanked her profusely.

Costumes must maintain functionality as well as beauty. How does she strike a balance?

"If it's a show we're doing ourselves, we go and watch rehearsal for a few days before we ever go any further because we will want to see what moves they're actually doing and then suggest stuff," she explains. Take lifts, for example.

"(Artistic Director Victoria Morgan) always wants the girls in a silk dress, but she doesn't want their crotch to show when the dress is up over their head."

Compromises must be made. The choreography often changes too.

"It's just a matter of one of us giving. Either you lose the skirt or you change your moves," she chuckles. "And most of the time we lose the skirt, because (they) aren't changing the moves."

"You have to think on your feet," she says.

Just like the dancers. ©