Kansas City Ballet Partners With Edgewater’s Halsey Onstage Reviewed by Victoria Marty on December 23, 2015 .
Fans of “The Nutcracker” know her as Mother Ginger, one of many characters in the Land of Sweets. And in the Kansas City Ballet’s version of the famous musical, she’s tall, sports a decorative beaded and sequined bodice, and wears a dress large enough to hide eight children.
That iteration of Mother Ginger is the result of a collaboration between two Edgewater businesses — Halsey Onstage, 1210 W. Thorndale Ave., and Edgewater Workbench, 1130 W. Thorndale Ave..
“The project began this summer when I started tambour beading a decorative beaded and sequined piece for Mother Ginger’s bodice and I made a matching headpiece as well,” said Rachel Coyle, who works for Halsey Onstage.
Mother Ginger was designed by Holly Hynes, who also redesigned an entirely new production for the Kansas City Ballet.
Coyle has been studying under costume designer and Halsey Onstage owner Travis Halsey since 2013.
She said Mother Ginger is a giant dress over a structure Halsey Onstage created to sit on top of a dancer’s shoulders.
Coyle, who has a fine arts background, took the reigns for all the craftwork and beading of Mother Ginger. To create the puppet’s head, she first sculpted her face out of clay and made a plaster cast. She then vacuuformed a plastic shell, which meant essentially melting a sheet of plastic over the cast. She and her team made a few extra heads just in case, she said. She then airbrush-painted Mother Ginger’s head.
She added that she and Halsey particularly enjoy Marsh’s 3-D printing technology. Marsh printed 3-D hands and facial features based off of Coyle’s sculpture. She then painted the hands and facial features. He also learned how to wire Mother Ginger so that the puppet could have remote-controlled facial features.
“Her eyebrows, eyes, and bottom lip all move independently or at the same time,” Coyle said.