Anatomy of a tutu
Ahead of ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ a look at the classical costumes
With apologies to pointe shoes, nothing says “classical ballet” like a tutu.
For more than a century, little has changed with the basic structure of its two essential styles: the historically older romantic tutu, a long skirt whose loose layers flow with the body; and the short, stiff classical tutu — the stuff of music-box figurines that forms a saucerlike, horizontal halo around a ballerina’s hips, also distancing her arms from her torso.
Ben Stevenson’s formal production of “The Sleeping Beauty,” which returns Thursday to the Wortham Theater, features both types. But when most people think of tutus, what comes to mind is the classical version that began to appear in the 1870s.
Hard to believe now, but those first tutus created a bit of a scandal, exposing dancers’ thighs in ways that probably did not help the reputations of ballerinas who at the time were often seen as little more than talented call girls anyway.
Designers can tinker endlessly with the top decorations, but it’s what’s underneath that gives a tutu its form. Viewing dozens of “Sleeping Beauty” tutus close up recently in Houston Ballet’s wardrobe studio, I couldn’t decide if I was examining the downy, up
ended butts of a flock of exotic birds or rows of wispy daisies. They dangled sideways on hangers to consume less space on the rolling racks, with short, ruffled panties at their centers. (Ballet people still primly call the coverage part “bloomers.”)
Laura Lynch, Houston Ballet’s head of wardrobe, gives her staff a single, time-honored pattern for most classical tutus, guided by a handbook published in
1958: Joan Lawson and Peter Revitt’s “Dressing for the Ballet,” based on costumes created for the Royal Opera House many years before that.
“A lot of what we do is restoration, preservation, rebuilding and refurbishment, unless it’s a new production,” Lynch says.
She doesn’t really need the book. She knows the requirements by heart. Tutus are designed in two parts. The fitted bodice is often boned inside to hold its form, with several rows of hook-and-eye closers on the back to accommodate dancers of various sizes. The “Sleeping Beauty” tutus have basques, elongated waistlines that dip with a V into the skirt/bloomer half.
A ‘ruff ’ start
The skirt portion is inspired by Elizabethan ruff collars, Lynch says.
The frilly, layered business consists of 9 yards of 54-inch netting. If you know sewing, that’s almost enough fabric to upholster a small couch. The material is typically tulle, sometimes combined with stiffer tarlatan. The fabric is cut into 12 layers, in descending increments. The scissor-cut edges for the “Sleeping Beauty” tutus are dagged, or zig-zagged, at various lengths; but they can also be left straight or scalloped.
The layers descend from the basque, with bloomers sewn in. Each layer is secured with three threads of soft, cotton embroidery floss so that when it bounces, it bounces as a unit. A hoop in there somewhere helps keep the whole thing aloft.
Some classical tutus are more pancakelike, but “Sleeping Beauty” designer Desmond Heeley, who died in 2016, preferred a softer bell shape. He had tutus made at different lengths for
different characters and dyed some of the undersides in gradated colors to create a gorgeous ombré effect.
A Tony Award-winning designer who trained as a milliner and prop maker, Heeley also designed the sets and costumes for Stevenson’s long-running productions of “The Nutcracker” and “Coppélia.”
“The Sleeping Beauty” costumes are 30 years old but still dazzling, heavily embellished with glitter, shiny paint and plastic flowers.
“Desmond loved using plastic,” Lynch says. “Any time I see plastic flowers, I pick them up because they don’t make this stuff anymore. That is the hardest and my favorite thing to do: to keep a costume the way the designer designed it.”
For this production, Heeley was honoring the 100th anniversary of “The Sleeping Beauty,” Lynch says. The show boasts 225 over-the-top costumes, including the tutus, with multiples of each design for different casts of dancers. Some of the tutus have been taken apart and put back together more times than Lynch can count.
“We spend lots of love and money on them,” she says, leading me through a maze of opulent confections on racks, including ballgowns for the royals, dresses for the peasants and the
“tearaway” gown that conceals the evil fairy Carabosse’s tutu when she arrives at the ball.
Tutus worn by dancers who are lifted by partners require continuous attention. Lynch’s staff has remade the Bluebird costume bodices this season, recycling their original décor onto new fabric, and the stock of Princess Aurora’s bright-pink tutus is always being refreshed.
“This is Aurora’s 16th-birthday-party ‘Hello, I’m lovely’ tutu,” Lynch says, picking up the pieces of one that is currently dismantled. “We bought new fabric and mixed it with old, cut the trimmings off and repurposed them. Next time we might add another tutu layer here, with a casing, and come out about 2 inches and add another hoop just to give it a little bit more life, before we have to gut it and re-net it again. We try to
keep them living as long as we can.”
She has completely rebuilt another Aurora tutu this season.
Naming her tutu
The name “tutu” likely evolved from the French slang “tu-tu,” meaning “bottom.”
Marie Taglioni was the first to perform in one — the long, romantic style (and the first pointe shoes) — during her father’s production of “La Sylphide” in 1832 at Paris Opera Ballet.
By the time Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” debuted in the late 1870s, dancers could jump higher and were capable of fancier legwork. Their costumes began to creep up above the knees to better display their virtuosity.
Aurora’s pink tutu shows off the ballerina’s one-legged balances through the famous Rose Adagio. Her friends and the various fairies wear slightly longer ones that are still considered classical; for a dance after Prince Florimund wakes up Aurora, Heeley put the ladies in romantic-style tutus that drift down around their calves.
Carabosse has the show’s longest classical tutu, which Lynch calls a “high-low.”
Principal dancer Melody Mennite loves wearing it. “It’s really different, black and really lightweight,” she says. “It’s a highfashion moment. I feel like I’m in an evening gown.”
Mennite is not so fond of other tutus she has worn. When a gal is dancing a demanding role that already taxes her stamina, she says, “a heavy tutu can impact your energy.”
She has a love-hate relationship with the romantic but heavy tutu she wears as Clara during the Waltz of the Flowers in Stanton Welch’s 2016 production of “The Nutcracker.” She has even given it a name, “Rosy,” she says, “because it feels like I’m toting another person across the stage when I’m in it.”
And she has not forgotten a “La Bayadère” tutu so stiff and wide she could knock a partner over with it, before the wardrobe staff reduced its diameter. “It would be great if the ballet were a comedy, but it’s not,” she says.
Updating the form
These days, choreographers hungry to update the art form experiment endlessly with tutu designs.
The wide, disclike biker-chic designs for Welch’s revved-up “Divergence” are the extreme. Designed in 1994 by Vanessa Leyonhjelm for the Australian Ballet, they have leather-look bodices, with tutus that call to mind car air filters. In fact, they are made of plastic air-conditioning filter mesh that was spray-painted black at an autobody shop, cut with a soldering iron and hand-pleated and edged with contrasting ribbon. From a side angle, they resemble ribbon candy.
Mennite chuckles, “I imagine Stanton helped us out by putting in a moment when we toss them.”
Holly Hynes’ tutu designs for Jorma Elo’s “One/end/One,” a 2001 Houston Ballet commission that the company will perform in March, aim for more of a bridge between the classical and the contemporary. They are topped with that same, stiff mesh but much smaller than the “Divergence” tutus, with just one arch-pleated hard layer over several layers of blue and black tulle.
“Wearing tutus is just part of our everyday life,” says principal dancer Yuriko Kajiya, who is scheduled to perform Feb. 27 as Princess Aurora.
Kajiya says she feels more comfortable onstage in a tutu than in a leotard, but with the exposure a tutu brings to her form, she concedes, “you definitely feel like you need to pull yourself together.”
No tutu has been more memorable for her than one she wore while guest-starring a few years ago for a small East Coast company whose costumes originally belonged to American Ballet Theater. Sewn inside an Aurora tutu was the name Natalia Makarova, evidence that it had been worn by the influential Russian prima who performed with ABT in the 1970s.
“She was shorter than me, but I had to wear it,” Kajiya says. “I felt very special, wearing that costume. Like a little girl.”