Ballets Russes Costumes

[Mrs. Stahlbaum]

I'm not sure if this belongs under Ballet History or in the Pro Shop, but I found this website with lots of nice pictures of Ballets Russes costumes. It took me a while to figure it out, but if you click on the small pictures of the costumes, you'll get a larger photo and small description.

 

Ballets Russes Costumes

[Mel Johnson]

Additional repositories of Ballets Russes materials include Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford and Jordan College of Music in Indianapolis, IN.

[Gina Ness]

Very nice...I wish I could get the videos to play.

[tangerinetwist]

You can see several of the Ballet Russe's backdrops at Butler's dance department website. When I was a student there in the late 1980s they were still using some Ballet Russe props, such as the couch in Nutcracker performances. We also used the Coppelia backdrop when I performed in the 1989 production.

 

http://www.butler.edu/dance/da_balletrusse.html

[kwdancer13]

Additionally, as a student at Butler this year, I was privileged enough to wear some of the costumes, party jackets and Arabian pants. It was so cool!

[longtimecoming]

Back in 1989 when I was dancing under Victor Moreno of the Ballet Rusee de Monte Carlo he had some of the costumes. They were TINY, but I wore some of the Coppelia costumes - the doll and the Dance of the Hours. I feel very privledged. He showed us videos of the 'baby ballerinas' dancing the same parts so we would get it just right.

[Mel Johnson]

Something out of the museum business that touches on this discussion: The clothes we see surviving from history are likely to be outside the average, and probably on the small end. Large clothes tend to get cut down to make a smaller edition of the same garment, or even a whole different smaller garment. The "people were smaller in those days" rubric is true, but not to the extent that costume collections would seem to indicate. The tiny clothes survive because they weren't used to death! There was no one smaller to whom to hand down, and you can't make a garment larger once it's made.