To celebrate the premiere of Ocean’s Kingdom, we invited our Facebook followers to ask Stella any questions they wanted answered on the project. Stella chose her favourites and answered them below:

Catarina Nobrega: Which is your favourite character?

Stella : Hi Catarina, I think the Terra Punks are the strongest characters in the ballet and the atmosphere that is given through the music, dance and costumes whilst they are on stage.

Mayis Hernandez: How do you feel about this great project?

Stella: I feel like it’s a real once in a lifetime opportunity to work with the New York City ballet, Peter Martins and of course my dad! It has been really interesting and quite challenging, but I like challenges and it’s incredible to work with your dad on this great scale.

Stephen Pain: I wonder Stella what has been your past relationship with dance and ballet – do you see this as a new chapter in your design?

Stella: Hi Stephen, I don’t really have a past relationship with ballet, but I always loved it and I would love to do more work in this direction.

Laura Ferguson: What was your inspiration for designing such dynamic costumes?

Stella: Hi Laura, The inspiration was definitely kind of driven by the story line of Ocean’s Kingdom’s quite specific characters, under water and above the water and really it was a matter of getting into the needs of the characters in the storyline and bringing something to that.

TamiAirah Pedersen Campbell: Did you get to listen to the music whilst you were designing the costumes for inspiration?

Stella: Yup! We got to listen to the music and I guess there are moments of delicacy in the music and the movements within the music, and we tried to capture this with the fabrics we used and the way in which the water dancers and their garments created the illusion of water and things like that. Although we listened to the music, I think the biggest inspiration of the costume was more the necessity of the athletes, ballerinas and also the storyline and the timing.