In the film Elizabeth The Golden Age, Cate Blanchett's splendid gowns designed by Alexandra Byrne were based on costumes created by Balenciaga for a 1941 stage play.
Balenciaga's work for theatre plays, dance performances and films is actually not so well known, but a recently opened exhibition at the Cristóbal Balenciaga Museum in Getaria, Spain, is currently tackling this connection.
"Balenciaga y Las Artes Escénicas" (Balenciaga and The Performing Arts; until 18th October 2015) features reproductions of pictures plus newspaper clippings, documents, posters and programs of theatre plays and dance shows, that not many people probably remember or even know about.
The exhibition curator Pedro Usabiaga - a famous photographer who started his career working for important designers such as Jean-Paul Gaultier and Nino Cerruti, and who later on became a collaborator of many fashion magazines - had to embark in a personal investigation that took him two years and that brought him to different institutions and museums to find the materials on display.
Balenciaga collaborated with prominent authors and artists over four decades: his first job in the performing arts consisted in dressing dancer María Elena Arizmendi in 1935 when she starred in Ravel's "Bolero" at the Kursaal of Donostia-San Sebastián.
Balenciaga then worked on many other productions, especially after he moved to Paris and got in touch with the local intellectuals.
In France he created wardrobes for Histoire de rire, Pas de mari, pas d'ennuis and Échec à Don Juan by Claude-André Puget, with costumes inspired by the Spanish Golden Age.
He also designed costumes for Orphée by Jean Cocteau, and for different works by Albert Camus, Françoise Sagan and Marcel Achard.
In the '40s, Balenciaga dressed actress Helene Perdrière in Hymenee, a play by Édouard Bourdet, and Yolande Laffon in Etienne by Jacques Deval.
In 1945 he made the white costumes for the performers of the Orfeón Donostiarra (one of the singers worked in his atelier, so this collaboration was born out of a personal friendship).
After a break during World War II, Balenciaga returned to the world of the performing arts in 1949 when he dressed Maria Casarès in Camus' Les Justes staged at the Théâtre Hébertot and directed by Paul Œttly.
Balenciaga then worked on Spanish works written by Alfonso Paso and Jacinto Benavente and in theatrical adaptations of famous authors such as Agatha Christie, while he also developed designs for flamenco icons à la Rocío Jurado and Lola Flores.
One of the most unusual pieces in the exhibition is a picture of a costume Balenciaga created in 1952 for Antonio Ruiz Soler also known as "Antonio El Bailarín", one of the very few menswear pieces ever created by the designer.
In 1962 Balenciaga dressed Marie Dames in Les fochés, a play by Jan Marsan, collaborating the following year to a new version of Cocteau's Orphée, directed by Jean Lauvrais and Jean Pommier. The performance also featured actress Christiane Barry in an iconic black sequinned cape by Balenciaga (Usabiaga managed to include in the exhibition a rare picture of this design).
The exhibition closes with images of the designs Balenciaga created for actress Isabel Garcés in pieces by Benavente, Paso and Françoise Dorin, and pictures of Amparo Soler Leal in Le cheval évanoui by Françoise Sagan.
Stage costumes are considered by museum curators as particularly fascinating as they must be well constructed to survive rehearsals and performances, robust handling and quick changes, while Haute Couture gowns, despite being beautifully crafted, are often worn only once or twice.
Though it mainly features images rather than proper costumes, this exhibition is therefore interesting when we come to consider the portrayed costumes from this point of view and when we realise that in this case the couturier was lending his skills and very personal touch not to a high fashion gown, but to the vision of many different directors, choreographers and performers.
"Balenciaga and The Performing Arts" is accompanied by a series of courses at the Balenciaga Museum that will look at some of the themes tackled by the event. In October, for example, a special course will look at set design and costumes.
Usabiaga hopes that, after the exhibition closes in Spain, he will be able to take the event to France where new links and - who knows - even further materials about this fascinating connection may be found among collectors or in theatre archives.
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