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General News: Toya L. Dubin to Receive Arts Council Award
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| Toya L. Dubin's Jewel Box Tutu |
October 17, 2012
by Leslie Sternlieb
Local High School Student Creates Glittering Ballet Costumes ‘To Beautify This World’
Many little girls have the dream of becoming a ballerina. But Toya L. Dubin, a senior at Cornwall Central High School, has known since the age of three that she was destined to become a costume designer—the person who not only conceives the look of the costume, but may execute it as well. That’s not to say she didn’t have dreams of sugar plum fairies dancing in her head—she also began ballet training when she was three years old, and is an acomplished dancer who has performed for several years with regional companies and completed the Joffrey Ballet School summer intensive program in New York last year.
For a young woman whose credo is “sparkly things make people happy,” Ms. Dubin is determined to use her gift to “cover the human form in beauty,” and “do what I can to beautify this world.”
She is well on her way.
Ms. Dubin was recently named the 2012 Orange County Arts Council Award for “Youth With Exceptional Promise” for the visual arts, announced Dawn Ansbro, executive director of the Orange County Arts Council, and will receive her honor on Nov. 9 at the Powelton Club, in Newburgh.
This past summer, she attended “Tutu School” in New York City, an intensive seminar in which she studied with top names in the ballet costume business, including Travis Halsey, costume director for the Joffrey Ballet, Kelly Sheehan of New York City Ballet Costume Shop and Claudia Folts, the founder of Tutu.com, a business that designs and creates custom dance costumes and accessories for professional and civic ballet companies.
At age 16, Ms. Dubin was the youngest of a dozen women who make their living as costumers at ballet companies across the country—and the experience, which included a minimum of 12-hour-long days, beginning early in the morning and often ending late at night, was the equivalent of choosing to go to boot camp on your summer break. The experience enabled her to learn best practices from the pros. This was not just a classroom experience; she designed and made a tutu awash in pale pink raw silk, silver and gray lace, and pale gray crystals, as well as a matching tiara.
She was also featured in a Huffington Post article describing Tutu School: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-blackmore-Dobbyn/claudia-folts-tutu_b_1875114.html
Two of Ms. Dubin’s original designs will be on stage this December at the Orange County Ballet Theatre’s 45th annual production of The Nutcracker. It’s particularly gratifying for her to see her work when the curtain comes up. “That moment when a dancer takes the stage in one of my designs is truly magical,” said Ms. Dubin. “When the lighting hits the costume and the audience gasps, I know that I’ve accomplished my goal.”
And though she has studied ballet for years, dancing a variety of soloist and corps de ballet roles in the Orange County Ballet Theatre’s Nutcracker and annual Spring Performance, as well as with the American Youth Ballet in Salisbury Mills, and Ballet Arts Studio, in Beacon, she dances for the express purpose of learning as much as possible about performing in order to make costumes that really work on stage.
Ms. Dubin, like all teenagers, worries about the challenge of being accepted by a college. In her case, a school that specializes in costume design. This seems ironic, given the fact that constructing a tutu is often the final project for an undergraduate student majoring in costume design—something that she had already accomplished at the age of 13. In fact, she constructs several tutus a year, all while going to school, doing homework, serving as a member of the National Honor Society, and rehearsing and performing her ballet roles. She also manages to squeeze in classes in classical drawing technique at Andrew Lattimore’s Atelier, in Cornwall, to improve her costume renderings.
Perhaps even most astonishing is that Ms. Dubin is practically self-taught in the esoteric world of ballet costuming. Living in Mountainville, she had no access to specialized sewing classes, and so she absorbed the basics by reading books on how costumes are constructed. “We would go to the library and look up on the database anything having to do with costume technique,” recalls her mother, who is also named Toya. “She ordered some of the most obscure costume and sewing-technique books from at least 16 local libraries. I would find her up at night reading them.”
Half of the family living room has been given over to Ms. Dubin’s own costume shop. And she has been busy turning out private commissions for tutus and tiaras for several years, among them the Snow Queen and Dew Drop tutus for the Orange County Ballet Theatre, and a private-commission Coppelia Variation tutu. In 2007, when she was 12, she designed and executed all the costumes for the Broadway Dance Arts summer intensive production of The Wizard of Oz. She costumed the cast of more than a dozen actors in three weeks’ time. She constructed the Wicked Witch of the West costume from scratch, and performed the role herself.
At the age of nine, Ms. Dubin completed her first commission, a Lost Boys costume for the Orange County Ballet Theatre’s 2005 production of Peter Pan. She conceived of a body stocking festooned with hand-painted leaves, designed to evoke a child living rough on an island.
For her ballet costumes, she often uses real, not synthetic, materials, like natural pearls and Austrian crystals. It’s not just the extra sparkle she’s looking for, it’s an added sensibility she hopes to impart to the dancer.
“For the dancers, putting on a costume with real pearls and crystals makes them feel differently. Pearls don’t show much under stage lights, but they count for the dancer. I’ve worn costumes where you can see the gum paste and they don’t convey a magic to the dancer,” Ms. Dubin explains. “The dancer creates the illusion of love, or of a different personality. I want her to step into a costume so solidly real that she truly becomes this fabulous other person. I want it to be a luxury for the dancer to wear my work.”
Orange County Ballet Theatre’s Co-Artistic Directors Carol Purcell and Alicia Lovely wrote of Ms. Dubin’s work, “Her designs exhibit a highly unusual and beautiful imagination and an exceptionally mature and nuanced aesthetic sensibility.”
When her father travels to Asia on business, he brings her shopping list specifying the pearls, including exact colors, she would like to use in an upcoming design. She refines the workability of a design by having dancer friends wear a costume, see how it moves, and offer feedback for her to make improvements.
Inspired by a design she admired in the Alexander McQueen exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York last year, she designed and made her own prom gown. To make the pattern, she wrapped her body in Saran Wrap and duct tape, drawing the pattern lines on the tape and transferring them to red velvet.
At a time of life when many girls seek gifts of perfume and outfits for school, Ms. Dubin’s Christmas lists cover the inventory of supplies and materials she needs for outfitting her costume shop. Two years ago, she requested a serger, a four-needle sewing machine useful for stretch fabrics and for edging pattern pieces. She also asked for an out-of-print book about Karinska, the iconic costume designer whose works still grace the dancers of New York City Ballet. This year’s list includes quilter’s pins, millinary wire, metallic cord, a gross of sew-on crystals (“please”) and a fabric steamer.
But it’s the lace, rhinestones, oceans of tulle, tutus and tiaras that are the stuff of Ms. Dubin’s dreams. And with continued hard work it will be a dream she hopes to share with a stage full of dancers, and a full house.
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