snow queen or снежная королева

Remember way back when in the fall when I posted sketches of costumes I was working on for the Russian school play? Well they finally came to fruition! The play was Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson, quite appropriate for January I think.
The costumes are done, the play is over and I have lots of pictures to share. Some of the pictures are from the dress rehearsal and others are from back stage during the play. It's hard to take good pictures while working backstage, but I think I did OK with a little help from my friends...
Speaking of help. Lest you think that I have managed to construct all these costumes all by myself, not! I had lot's of help from very talented and hard working people. All volunteer, all parents of the kids in the school. A big part of my job was actually organizing all the volunteers.
Oh and the set design! Wait till you see the fabulous sets! Needless to say we have very talented and professional parents in this school..

OK enough blabbering, on to the pictures!Let's start to the play's namesake shall we? Here's the Queen in all her glory! Looking a bit green in this picture, but she was all icy blue satin that I took to a long arm quilter to stitch lots of swirls into. Here's the Queens icy cave with Kai sitting on a block of ice. And the Queen enters with her flock of snowflakes and snow guards who never leave her sight. The Queen with her maker - Marina, who just happens to be one of the costumers at the Metropolitan Opera in NYC. This shot is a pretty decent representation of the madness that was happening on the stage, whirl winds! Here's our Grandmother, a beautiful teenager transforms into a frumpy grandma.. Here's Kai resting on the stage. Gerda, our heroine, posing with one of the robbers on the Grandmother's house set. Here's the gang of robbers on their set as Gerda begs to let her go. Her's our Robber Hag, sans her fabulous hat unfortunately. We took liberty here to make the hag into a sassy leader of the gang, Atamansha. Now way was this chick going to be old and haggard...Here we have the queen's haughty councilor and the Atamansha's daughter, Robber Girl.
This was one of my favorite costumes, the princess. All froth and pinkalisciousness!
Here she is on her set with all constituents and her prince (who is wearing sneakers here during rehearsal, yes..) Here's the prince with one of his buddies. Is his jabot big enough? hee hee This at the end of the play with all the participants bowing to the audience. The only decent shot I got of the crows (the couple in black) and the two bird messengers. How cute were they??
This is our storyteller giving his epilogue with Kai and Gerda by his side. Dancing daisies and snowflakes made the show awfully cute! Here's a shot of the daisies and Gerda in the dance sequence from the side of the stage. And we'll end with me back stage, dressing one of the robbers.
Thanks for sticking around for all the pictures! I leave you with the 1957 Russian cartoon version of Snow Queen.