The purpose of a dance costume is to enhance the dancer’s body and the concept of the choreographer (Dance Catalog 219). “Costumes are clothes and they are art. They make the invisible ideas visible” (Nadel 241). Dance costume has evolved throughout time and involves many different factors to create a costume that will engage the audience.
Marie Camargo made a great impact on dance costume today. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries she “throws off the corset, bares her limbs, and dances barefoot” (Penrod 13). Duncan began a new look, inspired by the Greeks, of tunics and scarves. This simple costume inspired a new form of dance costume and new ways of moving (Penrod 13). This imitation of the Greek clothing freed the naturally beautiful lines of the human body and movement. This change in costume extended the dancer’s space, and caused the costume to be made to conform to the curves and shapes of the body as much as possible (Art of Production 57).
Read more about Dance Costume: Requirements, Design
Famous quotes containing the words dance and/or costume:
“The author’s conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance, arms us with terrible freedom, so that every will rushes to a deed.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)