Costumer has designs on dance

By Sharon Christensen , On-Line Forty-Niner

Thursday, November 5, 1998

Liz Pelster's costume shop is far from typical. The expectation would be a tiny closet filled floor to ceiling with colorful, stale-smelling costumes.

Some might be constructed of stiff layers of fabric. Others would look romantic with their flowing rayon. There would be more leotards and tights than anyone ever saw.

The proprietor of such a shop would be a small, shriveled-looking woman with a pale blue smock, pins in her mouth and reading glasses on the end of her nose.

The thirty-something Pelster is surrounded by empty space. Her shop has more than 60 square feet and a black and white checkered floor, two large tables in the center and about a dozen sewing machines flanking the east-facing wall. A wall full of open windows floods the room with light.

"It really makes it easy when you have the space to be organized," Pelster said from her shop on the third floor of the Cal State Long Beach dance department building. "I like my windows."

Pelster, the dance department's resident costume designer and a CSULB alumna, started sewing when she was 12, taking a sewing class at the mall and practicing on her mother's machine.

"My mother got a sewing machine; she tried but didn't have the patience," Pelster said. "So she had a wonderful sewing machine as a paper weight."

After years of making dresses for herself, Pelster graduated from San Diego State in 1982 with a bachelor's degree in broadcast journalism, and soon realized that her career was not going in the right direction.

"When I got out of school, I wasn't using the journalism at all," Pelster said, adding that costuming had always interested her more.

"When I would watch a movie, I always focused on the clothing people were wearing more than the story," Pelster said.

Almost 10 years after graduation, Pelster decided, with her father's urging, to head back and get her master's of fine arts in theater arts from CSULB.

"That was kind of scary," she said.

After working in the theater department's costume shop and being hired back three times as a guest artist, Pelster approached her neighbor, one of the co-founders of South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, about volunteering in his costume shop.

"I was just sewing and putting on buttons," she said. "I really enjoyed the camaraderie."

Now in her second year as costume designer and shop manager, Pelster enjoys her collaboration with the choreographers, although most of her job is internal.

"I talk with the choreographers and I get a feel for the dance," Pelster said. "I look at the dance, hear the music, see the movement and get a feel for what the piece is about, how the piece looks in my mind.

"The more you sew, you get that third little mind's eye," said Pelster, who noted that with the general lack of characters in modern dance, there is little basis for costuming. "Sometimes the choreographers don't know what they want, but they know what they don't want."

Pelster described her recent collaboration with a choreographer who mentioned that the inspiration for his piece was his mother, an American Indian. She researched American-Indian costumes and presented her ideas to the choreographer for final approval. The result was a group of earth-toned, spandex dance dresses with the subtle addition of flaps of fabric on the shoulders, resembling animal skins.

Although unable to use her journalism degree toward a career, Pelster finds her communication skills help her in working with choreographers' imaginations.

"You have to use the English language to communicate the ideas," she said. "It's their baby that you're putting clothes on."

Two years ago, Pelster designed her own wedding gown and her bridesmaids' dresses.

"I'll find a pattern and I don't like the sleeve or the waist is dropped too low, so I'll alter it," Pelster said.

In addition to her design work here and at Cypress College, Pelster teaches one costuming class for CSULB in spring semester and one costume construction class for Cypress.

With a dance department show coming in two weeks, Pelster is getting final approval for her designs from the choreographers and fitting the costumes to the dancers. Pelster said that her favorite word out of a choreographer's mouth is "perfect."

"I know I'm truly successful when the choreographer's happy," Pelster said.