Meet Kevin Ellis, who changes costumes 11 times every night while helping create the magic and spectacle of The Royal Countess Zingara.
Kevin Ellis is part of Zingara’s fabric. Picture Michele Bega / The Citizen
When you go to see The Royal Countess Zingara at Melrose Arch, you may notice a character who is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. That is because reconstructivist designer, costumier and stylist Kevin Ellis changes 11 times a night.
From welcoming guests at the door as one person through to pouring tequila for audience members as another, performing on stage in a diva-costume and shaping the mood of the room in various garb, he is the production’s chameleon.
Ellis’s fingerprints are also on almost everything in the show, from the waiters’ hats to the diva’s hair. His eye was shaped in the costume rooms of the Moulin Rouge in Paris, where fabric and feathers were used to enhance beauty and presence.
“People think that I just walk around and look pretty the whole night. They’re wrong,” he said.
‘People laugh, they love it’
Ellis’s showtime begins at five o’clock and only ends once the last guest has left. By the time he arrives at his own solo on stage, the audience already feels as though they know him, and he knows them.
“I don’t want to call it a drag number. It’s a comedy number, which just releases the intensity of the show. People laugh, and they love it,” he said.
Ellis never seems to run out of energy. After the finale of Zingara, changed once again, he could retreat to his dressing room. Instead, he heads for the door to say goodbye.
“The people I have met, the energy. There’s something about the audience at the show and I cannot shut off until I have thanked everyone for the contribution they have made to my life,” he said.
Ellis watched every incarnation of Zingara between contracts abroad, always hoping to one day be part of it. Today, he credits creative director Richard Griffin with giving him the freedom to help shape the production.
Ellis said this Zingara is not the Madame Zingara of memory.
“The show is faster, quicker, sexier, brighter. It feels like a whole new engine has been put into a car. We are sold out nightly. People are crying for tickets,” he said. “It’s incredible.”
His journey to the big top has been anything but conventional. It runs from a stall at the Stables Market in Durban through Durban July fashion, Cape Town Met fashion, cruise ships, Las Vegas and A-list celebrities around the world. He is also a European and world dance champion.
There is no real way to define the man. He is one of the key people behind the look and feel of Zingara.
“I am a reconstructivist. I am a person who reuses, reshapes, resizes, relocates and reinvents. I can go to a shop, buy a leather jacket, cut the arms off, turn it inside out, line it with Indian cotton saris, rip the collar to shreds, add badges, and that’s me,” he said.
Reconstructivism makes him tick
It’s a philosophy that extends beyond the stage into the venue’s shop, which stocks his reconstructed Japanese kaftans made from pre-loved Durban sari fabric, handmade African bags and his one-off hats. “We could call them kitsch, we could call them absolutely mad. But when I walk out into the audience and I see 20, 30 people wearing something I’ve created, it just really feeds my soul,” he said.
Nobody knows how long the run will last. There is no end date. It will simply go until it goes, Ellis said. It suits him.
“I personally can’t wait to get to work every night,” he said.
What drives him is what the show does to people.
“People come here depressed or after a long day at work, tired. I can see it. I say, please leave it all outside and come and escape for a few hours. When I say goodbye to them, they share, ‘My goodness me, what an experience.’ And that’s why I am at Zingara.”
He hopes the curtain stays up indefinitely. “If I could do this for the rest of my life, it would be the most amazing way to spend part of my career. And I have certainly had an adventure thus far,” he said.
