The Australian Ballet

Evolution of the tutu

The costumes worn in the earliest ballets, those of the French Court in the sixteenth century, were merely clever adaptations of normal court attire. The dancers at this time were kings and queens and their courtiers. Ballet was performed by noble amateurs, who strived to impress their fellow dancers not only with the elegance and taste of their dancing but with the magnificence of the decoration on their costumes. So the costumes were big – and they were heavy – which meant that the dancing of the period had to be simple and dignified.

When Louis XIV established the Académie Royale de Danse in 1661 he paved the way for the appearance of professional dancers. Ballet moved from court to stage. Technique became more complex and stage costumes began to appear which allowed greater freedom of movement. Marie Camargo is given the credit for shortening her skirts to above the ankle so that she could demonstrate her intricate footwork. At the time this was thought of as shocking. Of course when ladies attempted to incorporate pirouettes into their dances, their whirling skirt revealed more than just technique, so caleçons de precaution – precautionary panties – were quickly added to the ballerina’s wardrobe.

Marie Camargo’s rival Marie Sallé went even further and appeared on stage in a simple muslin dress, without heeled shoes and with her hair hanging loosely around her shoulders. She wore this simple costume because she was portraying a Greek goddess and wanted to appear as authentic as possible, something that did not worry most dancers of the time. Her reform of costume was aided by the invention of tights by a man named Maillot, a costume maker and designer at the Paris Opéra.

An 1844 description of the dancers at the Paris Opéra in class has them dressed in the following: “The girls are bareheaded and decolletée; their arms are bare, the waist confined in a tight bodice. A very short, very bouffant skirt, made of net or striped muslin reaches to their knees. Their thighs are chastely hidden under large calico bloomers, as impenetrable as a state secret.”

The bouffant skirt mentioned above was an early version of what we know today as the romantic tutu - the costume seen today in ballets such as La Sylphide, Giselle and Pas de Quatre. These full, bell-shaped, multi-layered skirts reaching well below the knee are also familiar to us from the many sketches and paintings by Edgar Degas.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Italian ballerinas were performing new and amazing technical feats and creating a sensation in Russia. So the famous balletomanes of Russia could appreciate the cleverness of the tricks the Italians were introducing, such as the difficult 32 turning fouettés, they began wearing a shorter, floppy, sixteen layered tutu that reached just below the knee. The greater mobility it gave the dancer led to this tutu italienne being used in Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and other ballets which Marius Petipa was producing at the time.

With the coming of the twentieth century, dance clothes began to change rapidly, influenced by the young and adventurous designers employed by Serge Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes. One of his choreographers, George Balanchine, chose to have his dancers appear in a very short powder-puff tutu to show off his athletic choreography. Today, dancers wear even less, often appearing in the close fitting all-over tunic called a leotard after the trapeze artist Jules Leotard who invented it.