DANZ QUARTERLY No 2 December 2005

Obituary: Kristian Fredrikson – Genius of Form and Flights of Fantasy
1940 – 2005

By Francesca Horsley

When a sumptuous New Zealand production made its debut for the Royal New Zealand Ballet, chances are the set design and costumes would be by legendary designer Kristian Fredrikson.

This largely self-taught theatre designer has become synonymous with all that was classy in ballet. Sadly Kristian died last month, and will be much missed in the Australasian dance world.   

Although most of his career was spent in Australia, he remained a loyal supporter of the RNZB. This season’s The Nutcracker, which is just coming to the end, features Kristian’s designs – and has been dedicated to him. 

2005 was an outstanding year as he worked simultaneously on all three Tchaikovsky ballets - Swan Lake for the Houston Ballet, The Sleeping Beauty for The Australian Ballet – plus The Nutcracker. Speaking about The Australian Ballet’s largest commission ever of 300 new costumes and four main stage sets, Kristian told the Australian State of the Arts earlier this year, “It was me pouring out my feelings about this ballet and Tchaikovsky was looking over my shoulder.”
 
New Zealanders know Kristian’s designs for his work in ballet, but in fact he was also a renowned opera and theatre designer in a career that spanned more than 40 years.

Born in Wellington in 1940, his childhood was full of books, music and art. A top English student at college, he was hand picked to join the Evening Post as a cadet journalist. There he became aware of the world of theatre as their music and drama critic and this opened up the possibility of developing his latent interest in art.

A year’s stint in a commercial art agency, and a three month course in graphics at the Wellington Polytechnic’s short-lived School of Design, amounted to his formal training. However he buried himself studying magazines and paintings – subscribing to magazines such as Dance and Dancers and Ballet Today – in fact any book which showed illustrations for design.

 His first design was for the theatre production of A Night in Venice by Johann Strauss.“And that was an enormous success. When I look back on it, it was horrifyingly bad, I mean I had no idea. As the director said at the time, ‘I’ve never in my life seen so many colours on stage, but the extraordinary thing is, it seems to work’. But he did give me, at the same time, a valuable lesson.** His next work was Le Vie Parisienne, by Offenbach.

These shows came to the notice of the New Zealand Ballet, and they commissioned his first ballet, The Winter Garden in 1963. Leaving his designs in the hotel foyer for Dame Peggy van Praagh, founding artistic director of the Australian Ballet when they toured Wellington in the same year, was a bold and providential move – within three months he had left New Zealand to design Aurora’s Wedding for the company.

 He remained in Australia, becoming one of their greatest designers with many productions for the Australian Ballet, Australian Opera and Sydney Dance Company. He was on the design team for the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. His film and television work also meant he worked with Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, Judy Davis, Sir John Gielgud and Dame Margot Fonteyn. He collaborated with choreographer Graeme Murphy on a number of celebrated projects. Works he designed for the RNZB included Cinderella, Swan Lake, Jean, based on the life of aviatrix Jean Batten, Peter Pan and A Christmas Carol.

Kristian received four Erik Design Awards and won a number of prestigious Green Room Awards in Australia. In 1999 he received the Australian Dance Award for Services to Dance.

He said designing for dance was extremely demanding. “First of all, can I say that I think you’ve got to love dance and somewhere inside your soul or mind, or whatever it is that one has, a designer has to be dancer and also a choreographer. You’ll never be those in reality, but there’s got to be a certain sense of frustration at not being those things, so you can react. You have to know what’s happening to the body, know what stress and strain is being put on it.”

He said it was important to know how much fabric to put in a costume so that the male dancer was able to see the girl. “You’ve got to know something about the size of a tutu, what it’s  wind resistance is – and I don’t mean that in a totally ‘aviation sense’.” In rehearsal dancers wore simple clothing, and “they do all sorts of extraordinary and wonderful things and you’re going to change the line of all that with your design. You’ve got to know whether you’re going to enhance it or destroy it.”

He said the whole of a ballet costume is a trick – a triumph of artifice. “And very few designers can understand that unless you love dance, see a lot of dance and relate to, as I say, the body movements.”

Artistic Director of the RNZB Gary Harris said “Kristian was a creative genius whose breathtakingly beautiful work took audiences into another world.”

“He’s the ballet designer in New Zealand and Australia who everyone has looked to for his knowledge, skill and experience. His work is rich and layered with real depth, quality and class.”

Harris said Fredrikson’s legacy will live on. "In decades to come his name will continue to be synonymous with New Zealand ballet and theatre design."

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