Dance Costume

The relationship between dance and dance costumes is complex and does not simply reflect dance practice in a specific period, but also social behaviour and cultural values. Dance costumes can be divided into the following categories: historical, folk or traditional, ballroom, modern and musical dance costumes. Influence has spread from fashion to dance and back again.

From the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, festivities at European courts required highly elaborate dance costumes.

The style of court dance costumes tended to be similar to everyday dress of the period, for example, laced corsets, puffed and slashed sleeves, farthingales with skirts and applied decoration. In the early twenty-first century, the reproduction of historical dance costumes was evident in the activities of historical dance organizations, such as the Institute for Historical Dance Practice in Belgium.

From the fifteenth century onward, folk dance developed in Europe. The field of European folk-dance costumes is very complex, as each of the country's regions has its own dances, dress, and customs. Eastern European folk dances, such as czardas, mazurka, and polka, soon spread to England and France. Folk-dance costumes reflected the East European look in the use of bright colours on dark backgrounds. Costumes were often highly decorated with beads, metal, and silk threads. The basic women's dress was a short, light-coloured chemise and a petticoat, over which several layers of fabric were worn.

From the early nineteenth century, ballroom dances were taken up by a broad public, and special evening dresses were designed to fit these occasions. The waltz, fox-trot, polka, mazurka, and Viennese waltz required an elegant style. By the twentieth century, dance costumes for the tango, swing, charleston, rumba, bolero, cha-cha-cha, mambo, and samba were more revealing.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Isadora Duncan's natural movements on stage characterized a new era for dance. Free-flowing costumes and loose hair permitted a great freedom of dance movement. After World War I, avant-garde choreographers reformed and liberalized traditional dance and its costumes. Moving away from traditional ballet techniques, modern dance gave rise to a new era of costuming. Costumes and makeup took on a unisex look as choreographers felt it less relevant to differentiate female and male dancers. In 1934, neoclassical dance choreographer George Balanchine was the first to dress ballet dancers in rehearsal clothes for public performances. The costumes were almost always black and white.

Martha Graham replaced the traditional ballet tunics of male dancers and the folk dress and tutus of female dancers with straight, often dark and long shirts or rehearsal leotards.

Дата добавления: 2015-09-05