Charlotte loves to dance and has been taking ballet lessons in London, PEOPLE recently revealed. Kate also recently took her young daughter to see The Nutcracker ballet at the Royal Opera House in December.
During the outing on Wednesday, Kate said that Charlotte enjoyed the “little introduction” to the Royal Ballet last month and had “been very keen [on ballet] ever since.”
There’s another family link to Kate’s visit to the opera house. The royal got the opportunity to learn more about the scale of the department’s work and the production of various costumes.
Kate’s great-great-grandfather, Francis Martineau Lupton, was a mill owner who ran the family’s successful textile manufacturing business, William Lupton & Company, with his three brothers.
During her visit to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, Kate also visited the pattern room to see the process of working and creating costumes for a new production with designers, including sourcing fabrics and samples. She was then taken to the dye shop where staff displayed different techniques from dyeing to hand-painting and digital printing.
The costume department is responsible for creating, refurbishing and conserving thousands of opera and ballet costumes per season, with up to 600 costumes needed per production. That can add up to 10,000 costumes each year being supplied for The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera House.
The department has built up a historic costume collection of more than 5,000 items, including some dating back to 1861. Many of the costumes are used time and time again thanks to good maintenance and repair. It takes the entire revival workroom around 1,500 hours to refurbish the costumes.