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| About Costume design for dance is my strongest design passion. I have begun a great collaboration with Dwight Rhoden, creating works with him for Colorado Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre, Pittsburg Ballet Theatre and Complexions Contemporary Ballet. I enjoy a prolific collaboration with Julia Adam designing and often building sets and costumes for her commissioned works with Atlanta Ballet, Ballet Arizona, Ballet Memphis, Cincinnati Ballet, Diablo Ballet, Houston Ballet, Marin Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theater, and San Francisco Ballet. I have designed costumes and sets for Sundance festival films including Grant Barbeito's Ruben, Eric Eason's Manito, and Tony Pemberton's Beyond the Ocean. My work has been featured in Pointe Magazine and on the cover of Dance International, and in performance and film at the galleries of the Rubin Museum. Recent projects include The Little Prince for Julia Adam with Diablo Ballet, Amy Seiwert's Left Unsaid for Colorado Ballet, Catch Me if You Can for Christopher Fleming, and Hush for James Kudelka with Oregon Ballet Theater. I am presently designing a new ballet for Dwight Rhoden for NCDT, a new ballet by Brian Reeder for Colorado Ballet, and a new ballet for Julia Adam for Ballet Memphis. Background Darch has designed costumes since childhood. Her family playroom was known as the Barbie room. It housed a collection of seventy three dolls and most of the available accoutrements, including The Dream House, The Superstar Stage show, The Boutique, The Airplane, The Camper, The Beauty Salon, and The Corvette. She and younger sister Heather made tin foil Barbie space suits before executing projects from a book on doll clothing patterns. The sliding glass doors to her childhood home backyard served as a light box for paper doll clothing design. She was a regular subscriber to Vogue and W by age eleven. Pink nylon bed sheets were transformed into princess attire nightly. Her mother Cathleen, a Montessori teacher, was always ripe with craft project ideas, from stocking dolls to walnut shell turtles. Her grandmother Frances Darch was a painter and self taught seamstress. Darch is the descendent of nineteenth century Irish watercolorist Claude Hayes, and his father Edwin Hayes, a maritime watercolorist whose work is included in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin and is also featured in the set design of Riverdance. Megan Gillen, the youngest of her mother’s four sisters, is a modern dance choreographer, lawyer, and teacher who commissioned Christine’s first costume designs when she was fourteen. Gillen also encouraged her ballet training with Valia Seiskaya, at Flower Field in East Setauket, NY. Her weekend job was assisting at the Bocu Salon, where she learned hair design and coloring. Christine pursued a B.F.A. in Fashion Design at Parsons School of Design after high school. More interested in the creative process than becoming a fashion industry automaton, she switched tracks to graduate from Purchase College with a B.F.A. in Costume Design. Darch is engaged to composer Matthew Pierce with whom she is slowly restoring a 1903 Darch family home in East Northport, Long Island.
©2010 Christine Darch. All Rights Reserved. |
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