A few questions with Cirque du Soleil costume designer Liz Vandal
As is the case with most things delivered in a French accent, Vandal even makes cockroaches sound sexy. Kind of.
- www.cirquedusoleil.com
- OVO costume designer Liz Vandal
Montreal-based fashion/costume designer Liz Vandal makes her Cirque du Soleil debut with OVO, the French-Canadian touring menagerie’s love letter to the scientific class of Insecta (with a shout out to Arachnida). As is the case with most things delivered in a French accent, Vandal even makes cockroaches sound sexy. Kind of. Vandal, an award-winning designer who’s stitched ensembles for everyone from the National Ballet of Canada to the Back Street Boys for their Black ’n Blue tour, took on OVO’s costumes a mere six months after the birth of her child. Here she discusses her inspirations, why the world needs insects (and maybe not so much the humans), and how she threw up the first time she saw Cirque’s design shop.
You’ve always had a fascination with insects ever since you were young.
Yes. Well, I don’t know how old I was — maybe I was 5 years old — I would put in my parents’ backyard rocks — huge rocks — so I could turn them around and see what other new insect I would discover. We also had a fruit tree in the backyard, and there was always these ants’ nests that would go in the bark of the tree sometimes, and my dad had to cut the tree, and I would cry and say, “Don’t kill the queen!” and he would always kill the queen, because he knew they’d keep coming back otherwise, and I was crying for the insect, and my mother was screaming at me, “Don’t bring these insects in the house again!” So when they told me the show was about insects, I thought there must be a hidden camera. I thought it was too much. Who would honor more the insect than an insect lover like me?
Did they have any idea about your obsession when they approached you about the show?
Yes. Actually, the funny thing is, it’s such a beautiful process. When something is perfect for you, you think they’re always perfect in every step, I find. ... So when they told me it’s a show about insects, but it’s not an imitation of insects; We want to evocate sic the insect world. And you know, what does it mean? It’s very vague. What is evocation? What is it really?