Costumes, Costumes, Costumes...What Would Ballet Be Without Them?

Elizabeth Harrod as the White Cat and Paul Kay as Puss-in-Boots dance in Act III of The Sleeping Beauty, The Royal Ballet 2011/12 Season.

"Costumes play a vital role in dance performances, and they are more than just a means of covering the dancers' bodies. They serve as a visual representation of the dance's theme, mood, and the era it was created in."

From dressing up as a doll come to life in Coppélia to taking on the persona of a real life bird in The Firebird or Swan Lake, ballet costumes have always been an integral part of what makes ballet the stunning visual and fun art form that it is. The roots of ballet and its costumes go back as far as the 15th century in the French and Italian courts where costumes were made of cotton and silk and were mixed with flax to create exquisite, iridescent gauze to make the costumes.

In the romantic period in the early 1800’s, Marie Taglioni, the first ballerina to dance La Sylphide, shocked audiences by shortening her skirts so high that her ankles could actually be seen by the audience as a way to show off the intricate footwork of the ballet (not to mention the very first pair of pointe shoes made by Marie herself with just ordinary household items…ouch!). Since the beginning, ballet costumes have always been a thing of experimentation, artistry and sometimes, in this case, a significant conversation piece.

In the beginning of what is considered the “Romantic Period” of ballet, dancers wore long flowy white tulle tutus that little by little have gotten shorter and shorter to what we have today, the flat, short, “pancake tutu’s” like those that are worn in La Esmeralda. These tutus are designed to give dancers optimum movement and to show off the lines that they work so hard on day after day.

But thankfully ballet costumes are not limited to the whimsical and sometimes homogenous traditional costuming. With many ballets, there are your more traditional ethereal ballet fairy types with wispy wings and flowing fabric costumes but there are also so many memorable characters. And with memorable characters come memorable costumes. Take Sleeping Beauty for example. In Act III, during the wedding of Aurora, different fairytale characters attend the celebration and perform for the princess. These include well known and famously fun characters from stories such as Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Bluebird, Bluebeard, Ricky of the Tuft and Tom Thumb. Other French fairy tale characters featured are Beauty and the Beast, Pretty Goldilocks and The White Cat.

Alexei Ratmansky’s “The Sleeping Beauty,” for the American Ballet Theater at the Metropolitan Opera House in 2015

This inclusion of delightful and familiar costumed characters is also true of the famous Nutcracker Ballet and the famous journey to the Land of Sweets. And let's not forget the anthropomorphised animals in The Carnival of Animals ballet. Tumbling, rolling, jumping and spinning all of these memorable characters and their memorable costumes require a different kind of artistic skill and design in order to create pieces that allow the dancer to execute difficult movements while staying in character. And in an even more real life setting, in Don Quixote, the unforgettable character of the knight-errant himself, his trusty roly-poly sidekick Sancho Panza and the endless number of señoritas, toreadors, and gypsies all add beautiful costumes and characters to the ballet.

For what would a performance be without amazing costumes? And enormous care and time goes into making each piece, not only tailoring it to the artist who will be bringing it to life night after night, but creating each garment in a way that it can be handed down time after time with each successive season. There are some ballet costumes, tutus, that have been preserved for so long and taken such great care of, that they are even able to be worn many years later by the next generation of stars. Maria Kowroski, who danced for New York City Ballet, once wore a tutu once worn by the famous Suzanne Farrell who performed in it some 30 years before. “I thought maybe it would give me more freedom just to know that I’m wearing her costume," she said. Then, only partly joking, she adds, “You never know what’s gonna come out. You don’t know if it has magic powers.”

A tutu worn by Anna Pavlova, first performed in in 1907.

From faeries and other ethereal beings to fun and lovable characters from ballets like the Midsummer Night's Dream's Bottom (for what would all the faery costumes and shimmery be without the poor woodsman/actor whose head gets turned into that of a donkeys’?), ballet costumes are more than just pretty sparkly tutus. Though ballet is most known for what we’d like to think of as the tutus and corsets and pointe shoes, certainly it would not be as fun as we’d love it to be without all the amazing characters that make that world fun, exciting and complete. Thankfully over the centuries since it began, dancers, costume designers and so many other arts practitioners have shared their skills with us to bring us not only the beautiful ballet dancing that we love so much but the costumes that without it, ballet wouldn't be the same.

Note: This marks the one year anniversary of our monthly blog, taking you through the world of ballet and the stories that make it what it is and I just want to take a moment to thank you for your support. Thanks very much!

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