Costumes by Karinska -- Excerpt 3
The dancer was never merely a mannequin for Karinska’s virtuosic display, but remained, as for Balanchine, the point of the whole endeavor. The two Russian artists simply presented her, aided her, and elaborated her own look and way of moving. This celebration of female form reached a new peak in 1950 when Karinska recostumed Balanchine’s “Symphony in C.” Here, in the forty identical white tutus, the so-called “Balanchine/Karinska tutu,” the “powder puff tutu,” was born and forever changed the way a ballet dancer could look. . . .
This tutu had no hoop, only six or seven layers of gathered net, rather than the twelve or more used for the hoop tutu. The layers, each a half inch longer than the previous one, were short, never precisely aligned but tacked together loosely giving the skirt an unprecedented softness and fullness. The skirt fell in a natural, slightly downward slope over the hips to the tops of the thighs. But the skirt was only the most obvious of the changes and details that Karinska instituted. It was in her innovations with the bodice that Karinska really revolutionized the tutu.
Made before the panties or skirt are attached, the bodice is the foundation of the costume. Karinska’s experiments with the cut, shape, seaming and decoration of the bodice had begun in 1932, when she made her first one. Using anywhere from six to fifteen panels of fabric, Karinska was a pioneer in the practice of cutting on the bias (the diagonal of the fabric as opposed to straight up and down or across) for a highly fitted garment. Cutting on the bias was a much admired innovation in the Paris couture world of the 1930s - Chanel and Madeleine Vionnet used the technique - where Karinska no doubt came across the idea. But the beauty of the bias cut were usually found in loose fitting garments, where the diagonal created its own kind of shape and sexy cling. Karinska made a tremendous innovation in using the bias cut for a tightly fitted bodice, where the give and take of the cut could be used to accommodate the aerobic requirements of a dancer’s - or opera singer’s - rib cage. “No one else knew how to do a bodice like that or even knew why you should do a bodice like that,” says Patricia Zipprodt the Broadway and ballet designer. “Most of them were so clumsy, straight up and down bodices with seams, seams, seams, but never any alteration in the fabric, until Karinska. Her costumes were danceable things, singable things.” |
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