FLOODS DAMPEN HOUSTON BALLET'S `SWAN LAKE'.

Swans and courtiers alike in Houston Ballet's September 20-30 performance of Ben Stevenson's Swan Lake will look a little different this year. Thanks to June's Tropical Storm Allison, the swans' feathers were actually submerged.

When the killer storm swept through Houston, the downtown Theater District was one of many areas hard hit. Wardrobe supervisor Pat Padilla says the company's wardrobe shop, in the basement of the Wortham Theater Center, had three and one-half to four feet of water in it. The costumes for the then-running Giselle, the sumptuous Cleopatra, just back from London, and this September's Swan Lake were all damaged. Not to mention the girls' pointe shoes and, says Padilla, "fifty to sixty pairs of custom-made mens' boots."

Floods came swift and hard, thirty inches of rain in twenty-four hours, and started after the Friday evening performance of Giselle, while sets and costumes were in the theater for the performance. At press time, damages were expected to run between $600,000 and $1 million, not including lost revenue from two canceled performances of Giselle.

As the devastated city began returning to normal last summer, Padilla and aides waded into the theater basement to salvage costumes. "We lost a lot of patterns," she says, "and a couple of sewing machines as well." The first step in restoration was air-drying the costumes, then sending them to the dry cleaners before trying to refurbish some of the less damaged ones.

Padilla was hopeful that the shop, operating in donated office space during the summer, could restore or replace much of what would be needed first, for the fall Swan Lake run. "We do have the option of renting a production from someone else. That's plan B," says Padilla, adding that her emotions were running from devastated to frustrated in the storm's aftermath.

Insurance covered much of the damage suffered by the Ballet. But there were some losses that it's impossible to put a price on. The Theater District's underground parking garages sustained structural damage that kept them closed for months--a reality that kept patrons away. And dancers performing during the Giselle run--such as Barbara Bears, Dawn Scannell, and Kathryn Warakomsky, who were all making their debuts in the role in their final season with the company--missed chances to perform. Scannell and Warakomsky did dance the part once the waters receded. But, sadly, Bears was unable to appear in what would have been both her debut as Giselle and her swan song.

Dancers' tights, leotards, and personal mementos were also destroyed when the dressing rooms flooded. Soloist Sally Rojas lost a theater case adorned with sixteen years' accumulation of stickers from every city where the company performed: "I was hoping to keep it forever for my children to know where I had traveled during my career."