Esteban Cortázar Designs Costumes for Miami Ballet
Approaching 40, Esteban Cortázar has come full circle. South Beach’s famed wunderkind who hobnobbed with Gianni Versace, Madonna and ’90s supermodels is rediscovering his roots after spending 16 years in Paris. Living among New York, his native Colombia and South Beach, he’s designing costumes for Miami City Ballet’s “Sentimiento,” a commissioned work choreographed by Durante Verzola that premieres at Miami’s Arsht Center on Friday within the “Fresh & Fierce” program.
“I’m a beach boy at heart,” said Cortázar of an environment that brings him happiness and inspires his creativity. “I used to have an insecurity about Miami, but it feels like less of a town now and more of a city with some weight to it. I want to be part of this cultural moment.”
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Though it isn’t his first time collaborating with the dance world, the experience differs from his foray with New York City Ballet in 2021. Instead of going into it blind, as was the case with NYCB under pandemic circumstances, he was able to see the choreography and listen to Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona’s score beforehand. Born of nostalgia, costumes juxtapose Cortázar’s early exposure to Art Deco architecture, drag queens and ballroom dancing, an obsession cultivated through movies and TV shows.
“I’ve always wanted to be on ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and would be in it to win it,” he said, showing bubblegum pink costumes adorned with crystal swirls and ostrich feathers, which he calls his two flamingos. “A New York seamstress who makes ballroom gowns actually started them.”
Cortázar appreciates how Verzola gives a classical art form an edge and originality, so he’s able to design with many dance references in mind — Havana showgirls, tango, jazz, Latin, a little sexy and the waltz. He produced an exclusive graphic print with Art Deco flourishes, lemons and nude figures like those in Henri Matisse’s “The Dance” for ballerinas’ quilted bodices and in a large-scale version for male dancers.
“It’s the most South Beach look. I’d love to make a [fashion] piece with it,” he said of the leftover printed organza. “The dancers are also having so much fun. They run out to show off their costumes and Instagram them behind our backs.”
Cortázar finds the process of costuming 16 dancers far less stressful compared to designing runway collections. Without the pressure to sell, his only worries are function and fit. Variations of love stories, the work begins with an explosion of color, including an extremely flouncy tutu with jelly bean-colored trim that bursts from the rear and a stretch mesh top screen-printed with blue palm trees and hot pink gulls, and slowly transitions to black and white with burnt coque feathers for extra glamour. Watching a dress rehearsal, he leans over to whisper that it’s the company’s first-ever romantic pas de deux with two men. A more mature, all grown up Cortázar gets emotional during the final scene’s pas de deux of another couple breaking up — the last dance.
“The title ‘Sentimiento’ says it all. It means ‘feeling.’”
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