What to Do in a Last-Minute Costume Catastrophe

A mother puts finishing touches on the new costumes for "The Name Game."

Jennifer Colby of Colby Dance Center in Maitland, Florida, lived through her worst nightmare last competition season: Her studio trailer, filled with the costumes, accessories, props and sets for every one of her studio's numbers, was stolen the night before Nationals. Here's how she pulled through, and how you can, too, if bad luck strikes.

The night before setting off for American Dance Awards Nationals in Orlando, Florida, this past July, Jennifer Colby and her staff at Colby Dance Center in Maitland, FL, carefully inventoried and packed the trailer containing all of their costumes and props. Every hat, every glove, every prop was accounted for, neatly zipped into garment bags and labeled with each dancer's name. No item was overlooked, no sequin left unturned. "This is too good to be true," Shannon Mackie, a CDC instructor and Colby's right-hand woman, recalls thinking as they locked the trailer door for the night. "Something has to go wrong."

That thought was prophetic. The next morning, when Colby arrived at the studio for last-minute preparations, she nearly dropped her coffee into her lap. The trailer, filled with the costumes, props and hard work of 45 young girls and their families, was gone-stolen.

If CDC dancers are known for anything, it's their award-winning costumes. Colby flies all over the country in search of new fabrics, beads and sequins, then creates her costumes with her staff seamstress, who sews them by hand. Colby shuddered to imagine what the judges would think when her students walked onstage in simple class leotards.

Pick Up the Phone

With only two hours until her students were due to arrive at class, and less than 24 hours before they were set to take the stage, there was no time for tears, and no time to panic. "I reached for my cell phone and started dialing," Colby says. "I made three calls: one to my dad, who's our business manager, one to Shannon and one to 911."

Three hours later, every family was contacted. "We didn't know how to talk to the parents without them getting emotional," Colby says. "So Shannon and I wrote out a speech. We started by asking the parents to wait until we finished reading to react or ask questions. Somehow, we got through it." Together, Colby and Mackie asked each of the 55 families, especially those with senior dancers, to gather all of the costumes they owned, no matter how ancient, and meet in a hotel room at the competition. By 5 pm that day, more than 400 costumes were being counted, sorted and assigned to students.

Utilize Your Community

Once the families were informed of the situation, it was time to call in the cameras and notify the community. "Channel 9 was there in no time," says Deborah Alsup, whose daughter Ashley has danced with CDC for 11 years. "The police told us the thief usually dumps the contents of the trailer, and we were hoping someone would call in and tell us they had found hundreds of blue garment bags in a field somewhere."

Unfortunately, the costumes were never found. But the girls quickly recovered. "When they found out they would be on TV, it set their spirits back on track," Colby says. "It was such a spirit lifter to know that people really cared." The segment, which aired during five separate newscasts, featured the girls practicing for Nationals and performing in their last minute attire.

Pull From Unlikely Sources

Once every available costume was assigned, several numbers were still left to outfit. One, appropriately titled "Pressure," required 30 schoolgirl uniforms. "It was a Diamond Award winner [at Regionals], but the story would be lost without the costumes," Alsup explains. Enter Maureen Fink, a CDC parent whose daughter attended Catholic school. "She went to the school and got them to lend us 30 uniforms for that number and basketball uniforms for another tap number," she says.

Beth Clatworthy, another CDC mom, drove her sewing machine to the Orlando hotel room and, from extra material Colby found at the studio, hand-sewed two new solo costumes overnight. Several other volunteer parents spent the evening tracing, cutting and sewing handmade numerals onto the front of leotards for a number titled "The Name Game."

Tell the Competition Director

The dance most affected by the theft was Colby's prized, 48-dancer Michael Jackson production number. Besides elaborate costumes, which were replaced with students' blue studio leotards, the number was designed to take place on 40-foot-wide, six-foot-high stairs that Colby's fiancé, Rex Alexandre, and a few dads spent more than 120 hours building. The enormous prop, which was stolen along with the costumes, was lined with rows of lights and accented with 12-foot-high replicas of Michael Jackson album covers hung as backdrops.

"It was interesting doing a four-level dance flat on the stage," Colby says. "There was no time to redo the choreography, but [the students] did the best they could."

One thing that helped the judges to gain a better understanding of the choreography and the students to feel more comfortable was telling the competition director about the disaster. "On the very first day, I told the director what happened," Colby says. "[She was] wonderfully supportive and had a great idea." The director instructed her to bring recital pictures and studio programs to the competition and, each morning, the judges were shown photos of the CDC dancers in their appropriate costumes before the day's events began. "It really did make a difference in a few numbers," Colby says. "And it meant a lot to the girls."

Great Sportsmanship Pays Off

More help came from an unexpected source: other teachers at the competition. When word of CDC's plight reached the competition floor, Colby was flooded with offers from colleagues wanting to lend a hand. "Some I've known forever and some just know of our studio," Colby says. "They offered to lend us costumes from their best dances and stay up all night to help sew. That's such an amazing thing to hear, especially in such a competitive environment."

One of the first lessons Colby teaches her competitive dancers is never to burn their bridges. "I always tell them to make friends with dancers from other studios and treat them with respect," she says. "Now they understand why." While CDC ended up placing four numbers in the dance-offs and garnering the high-scoring choreography award for "The Name Game," Colby insists that the biggest reward for her students was learning the importance of good sportsmanship: "A year from now, they'll realize Nationals was probably more successful this year because they learned valuable lessons, even though the situation really stunk."

Looking Toward the Future

In retrospect, Colby notes that if their trailer, which was plain white, had had their studio logo on it, the thief might have been deterred, or the trailer might have been located. It is also a good idea, she adds, to lock your studio trailer inside a parent's garage once loaded.

Colby is still working with the police and CDC's insurance agencies (she had business property insurance for both the trailer and the contents) to recover as much as possible of the more than $60,000 worth of stolen merchandise.

"If there's any advice I can offer, it's that insurance is one of those things you just don't skimp on," Colby says. She was required to submit invoices from seamstresses and receipts for every costume, garment bag, hat, glove and sequin, even for those purchased as long as five years ago. "If I didn't keep detailed records and every receipt, this process would have been impossible," Colby says. "Fortunately, I did, and my students' parents will be reimbursed for much of their loss."

New York City based freelance writer Alyssa Roenigk also writes for ESPN The Magazine.