Ballet Competition and Costume Design: A Glimpse Behind the Scenes of Awesomeness TV's Joffrey Elite

Directors Matthew Prescott and Maximilien Baud are pictured with Joffrey Elite students elegantly costumed for the #bouncecompetition in East Rutherford, NJ. @Instagram #joffreyelite #xiaoxiaodesigns

In a recent conversation with Eva Baud, costume design team member for Joffrey Elite as well as mother of Consulting Producer & Co Director Maximilien Baud, she shared a bit about her experience as a volunteer behind the scenes of the new YouTube docuseries that follows the lives of dancers at the Joffrey Ballet School. "We began filming with Milojo Productions back in October and the first pilot program ran two days after Thanksgiving," said the forty-year fashion industry veteran who graduated from FIT. "After seeing the results from the first episode, the producers decided to go forward with additional episodes - as of this moment it is about 13 episodes all together and hopefully there will be more down the road."

In episode 5, Eva and the design team, along with New York-based designer and professional ballerina XiaoXiao, make a cameo appearance as they fit one of the dancers for the group costume worn in the Bounce Competition (episode 6, part 1, released last week). "This was a really great opportunity for me to create something and also to work with XiaoXiao," said Eva, "You can see in the sixth episode, as the dancers are going on stage, they are wearing her leotard and then you can see the additional design which was done by myself."

Each costume begins as a leotard, hand-selected for each choreographed piece from XiaoXiao's leotard collection and then taken to the realm of the theatrical and the magical. For the #bouncecompetition group costume, Eva added black chiffon and worked with the make-up artist on creating a Dakota Johnson in Fifty Shades Darker inspired mask to convey an air of mystery.

#bouncecompetition ballerina in costume and makeup #joffreyelite

First a fashion designer and then a retail manager for the duration of her career running boutiques for iconic fashion houses, including Henri Bendel, Hanae Mori, Prada and a fifteen-year tenure as General Manager of the Calvin Klein Collection - Eva's costume design choices bring delight and an elegant (if not Calvin-esque) minimalism to XiaoXiao's gracefully sweet-yet-chic leotard confections.