Because of the Coronavirus pandemic, International Dance Day, taking place every year on 29 April (anniversary of the birth of Jean-Georges Noverre, the creator of modern ballet) moved from theatres to the houses of dancers and performers who delighted their followers streaming on social media short classes and dance routines.
Dance has strong connections with fashion as we saw in previous multiple posts about costumes, body movement and about the various collaborations between fashion designers and choreographers.
The latest exhibition to pay homage to the dance world is "Ballerina: Fashion's Modern Muse" at the The Museum at FIT, that can currently be "visited" online as the museum, like all other cutural institutions across the world, is closed because of COVID-19.
Many artists also fell in love with the world of dance and portrayed or sculpted ballerinas: Edgar Degas became famous for his pastel drawings, oil paintings and bronze sculptures of dancers.
His paintings of dance classes are among the most beautiful and ambitious works about the ballet world: one of its versions, painted in 1874 and preserved at The Met Museum, in New York, shows a rehearsal room at the Paris Opéra populated with twenty-four women, among them ballerinas and their chaperones. Some of the girls are dancing, others are resting or getting ready to perform in front of Jules Perrot, a famous ballet master, who is conducting the class with his hands on a long cane.
We don't actually know if this is actually a dress rehearsal, an examination or a lesson as the costumes indicate this may be an examination before a dress rehearsal.
Yet the most intriguing thing about this artwork is not trying to discover what kind of dance class we are taking part in, but the fact that the scene can be admired from different angles and perspectives. You can indeed focus your attention on the girls at the back, on the girl in the centre performing for the ballet master or the ballerina having her costume adjusted by another girl in the foreground. Besides, we can also see the outside space entering in the rehersal room, reflected in the mirror.
Talking about different perspectives, did you ever try looking at a ballet costume from another perspective?
We usually admire a tutu as donned by a ballerina or displayed on a dummy in exhibitions and museums or maybe hanging in a costume atelier, but if you search the Victoria & Albert Museum archive, you will be able to see images of costumes and tutus laid flat as they are stored in the actual archive.
Among the others there is the costume for Princess Florine in Marius Petipa's ballet "The Sleeping Beauty" as worn by Alicia Markova. This classical tutu with a light blue bodice and white skirt was designed by Manya Mlle.
The archive also preserves the costume for Swanilda as the Doll worn in the ballet "Coppelia" by Susan Lockwood. The tutu, created by costume designer Sir Osbert Lancaster, is not as richly decorated as the other one, but it comes in a wonderful shade of pink and is characterised by a minimalist zigzagging motif that becomes more obvious if you look at the tutu laid flat.
Another tutu that has a shape that becomes more evident when you change your perspective is the one designed by Oliver Messel in 1953 for an Attendant ofthe Queen of the Waters in Frederick Ashton's ballet "Homage to the Queen". The costume was worn by Judith Sinclair and came in a blue shade that called to mind the sea and it is decorated with wired red chenille twisted into coral shapes. The bodice simulates instead a shell structure that appears very clearly once the tutu is laid flat and admired from above.
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