Costume design

Costume for ballet is governed by five considerations: line, decorative design, colour, material, and relation to the dancer's movements. Again, the designer must always bear in mind that the costume worn by a dancer will be seen mainly under conditions of movement and, frequently, in very rapid movement.

. . . .

Costume can play a considerable part in a ballet; it can assist the dancer in the creation of a character, emphasise line, and confer strength or softness according to its cut and material. Even a comparatively insignificant article of dress such as the white gloves worn by Chiarina and her friends in the pas de trois "Chopin" in Fokine's Le Carnaval can become so important that the dance is ruined if the gloves be made of another colour.

Design for the ballet by Cyril W. Beaumont. 1937. Pages 14 and 15.

Scene design

Ballet is a complex art not fully savoured unless allied to its sister arts of music and painting, and the success of the complete work depends a great deal on the value of their co-operation, for inartistic scenery or costumes can mar a ballet just as much as poor choreography or bad dancing.

In general, the ideal scene is a painted back-cloth used in conjunction with suitable wings or cut-cloths, for this permits the attainment of the highest degree of poetic illusion, an essential quality, for the world of ballet is the domain of the unreal, and this type of setting frees the greatest area of the stage, an important consideration where dancing is concerned.

The scene can also take part in the ballet, for instance, the lines of the design can be repeated in the movements of the dancers. In the same way the scene can be used to reduce the dancers in size or, alternatively, accord them added height. The setting can concentrate attention on the dancer by throwing her into relief, or, failing sufficient contrast between costume and setting, reduce her to semi-obscurity.

Design for the ballet by Cyril W. Beaumont. 1937. Page 14.

Stage design in the 17th Century Italy

The representation of clouds was an important factor in spectacles founded on classic legend. These appear to have resembled a series of curved sky-borders, ranged one behind the other to suggest banks of clouds. These clouds became more and more elaborate as they were used in conjunction with the appearances, descents, and ascents of triumphal cars bearing illustrious deities.

Drop-curtains were rare, the change of scene being carried out in full view of the spectator, whose attention was to be diverted by means which can only be described as artless. For instance, Sabbatini [Nicola] suggests a staged disturbance at the back of the audience, or a sudden crash of drums and trumpets.

The lighting was obtained from candles or lamps hidden behind the scenery, or placed above the heads of the audience, and sometimes even on the stage itself in the manner of crude footlights. The intensity of the lighting was increased by placing bottles of water before the lights or setting burnished basins of brass or copper behind them. Coloured light was achieved by tinting the water in the bottles, an effect still to be observed in the windows of certain chemists' shops. As to effects, there were trap-doors for appearances and disapearances, while a person might be changed into a tree or a rock by the simple process of sliding up from below a piece of scenery so painted. There were devices for the simulation of lightning, while thunder was imitated by the rolling of a heavy cannon-ball over an uneven surface. Thunder played an important part in pieces in which deities abounded, since their appearance and departure were invariably marked by peals of thunder. Finally, the motion of seas was suggested by painted cloths caused to rise and fall by the turning of rollers place beneath them, or by the manipulations of ropes attached to the underside of the cloths.

Five centuries of ballet design by Cyril W. Beaumont. 1939. Page 8.

Erik Bruhn and the responsibility of talent

Having to live up to such a wealth of talent has not been easy for Erik Bruhn, though lavish, and burdensome, praise has never been denied him.

He recalls how members of the Royal Danish Ballet would stand amazed at his feats in the Royal Danish Ballet School classroom. "People from the professional company would come and watch me do certain things," says Bruhn. "Of course we were all trained in the Bournonville technique, but I had a facility for turning and I could do certain things within the framework of the music that somehow intensified my movements. This all came very naturally to me, and I had no idea why. At any rate, the press got wind of my ability and someone came to interview me. For some reason I told the interviewer that I planned to stop dancing -- right then, at fifteen. You see, I became frightened of my capacities, and frightened of the responsibility of the talent I was apparently born with. Of course, I continued dancing, but that initial fear has never left me."

Erik Bruhn, Danseur Noble by John Gruen 1979. Pages 1-2.

Lifar and Giselle

I must say that I had taken the greatest possible care in the preparation of that ballet. I changed the colour of the costume--violet instead of white--and I added a romantic cape. With his complete agreement, I also modified entirely Benois's stage-setting. So as to lend more dramatic relief to Albert-Hamlet, in the second act I put a great bunch of flowers in his arms so that he might, with melancholy, pose them on the tomb of his beloved. I insisted that these flowers, arums and lilies, must be real, because as living things they seemed to me to add, as it were, a human presence to this romantic drama which, for my part, I wanted to see transformed into a Shakespearian tragedy.

This success of Giselle [1932] made ballet history. Spessivtzeva's interpretation of the part of Giselle was, in my opinion, the absolute perfection of choreographic art. In this role she was the greatest, the most sublime, dancer of the 20th century.

Ma vie: From Kiev to Kiev; an autobiography by Serge Lifar. 1970. Page 115.

Lifar at the Paris Opera

At the Paris Opera in those days the Dance was regarded as an agreeable amusement, a display of effortless grace where pretty girls assumed poses and were accompanied by male dancers whose role was to show off the ladies. Since a performance of this sort does not demand any very close attention from the audience, it had become a tradition for the chandeliers to be left lighted in the theatre. In this way people could recognise one another, the subscribers could exchange greetings and pay visits from box to box before going off to the sacrosanct foyer de la danse where old gentlemen met and made much of charming young women. And for a great many people such opportunities as these constituted the most obvious reason for having ballet performances at all.

. . . .

There was everything to be done. I started off energetically and the first thing I did was to give orders for the chandeliers to be put out during performances. In this way the attention of the audience would be directed towards what was happening on the stage. There were many other urgent reforms to be undertaken. I demanded from every performer an artistic make-up, for the art of make-up was totally unknown in the Opera ballet corps. At first I had to be myself the teacher. I forbade the wearing on the stage of all jewellery not forming an integral part of the costumes or absolutely necessary for the roles. I had real wigs made to replace the lumps of tow which up to then used to be stuck on dancers' heads. I did away with the trunk-hose worn over tights and the elastic on dancing-shoes. I made all the male dancers shave off their moustaches and forbade these to be worn on the stage. The hardest thing of all was to get the danseuses to dance on the tips of their toes and not half-toe.

Ma vie: From Kiev to Kiev; an autobiography by Serge Lifar. 1970. Page 107-8.

How does one design Giselle?

How does one design Giselle? To invent settings and dresses for an old ballet which has become a classic, for Giselle, Coppelia or Swan Lake, seems to me one of the hardest tasks facing a designer of to-day. First he must consider the place and period in which the action of the ballet takes place: in the case of Giselle, medieval Germany. Then he cannot forget that Giselle is a ballet of the eighteen-thirties, so the Middle Ages must be somehow tamed and romanticised a la Louis-Philippe. Finally, he knows that his work must be visually acceptable to a modern audience.

This book contains many examples of the way modern painters have treated old ballets. It is clearly a mistake for them to give rein to their idiosyncrasies in the way they might with a new creation. Such settings for Giselle as the fantasies of Berman and Carzou made it impossible for the dancers to create an illusion of reality, to render the tragic action credible and moving. The designer must strike a balance between the real and the theatrical, between his own style and a pastiche of another period.

Modern Ballet Design: A Picture-book with Notes by Richard Buckle. 1955. Page 2-3.

Sets for Coppelia

Coppelia is the hardest ballet to design, for if the artist tries to be at all smart or clever the delicate, sentimental old-fashioned flavour of the work is lost. The village street scene has to be Hungarian and musical-comedyish, the workshop of Coppelius has to be musty and un-decorative: both tend to strike the imaginative designer as depressing undertakings.

Modern Ballet Design: A Picture-book with Notes by Richard Buckle. 1955. Page 102.

Nureyev

That is what keeps him [Nureyev] ahead of the field. That, and the intensity of every performance. Remarking once that "it's quite difficult to dance, you know," he went on to elaborate that in a vivid metaphor: "It needs commitment and passion; every time you dance it must be sprayed with your blood. So much effort for so little reward--not from the public and critics, I mean, or the box office, but from yourself."

Nureyev. Aspects of the Dancer by John Percival. 1976. Page 123.