3.4 - Leon Bakst: Costume design for Felicita in Les femmes de bonne humeur. Pencil and watercolour on paper, 1917.
3.5 - “A Peep at the Parisot!”. Print by Isaac Cruikshank, 1796.
Much later, another designer –Leon Bakst, for a production commissioned by Les Ballets Russes– will imagine a dress that left the breasts uncovered; with The Good-Humoured Ladies23 Léonide Massine created a ballet that overflowed with comedy by telling the intricate love affair between Costanza and Rinaldo, who must overcome the multiple obstacles their parents present to their relationship; Bakst designed for the character of Felicita (Costanza’s frivolous friend) a dress as audacious as the role proposed and, once again, as it had happened before with Taglioni’s costume for The Queen of the Bees, the modesty of the dancer Olga Khokhlova –by then already dating Picasso– was saved by the costume-shop seamstresses that took some liberties when interpreting Bakst’s design and slightly raised the neckline.24
Another dancer would shake up the audience by showing more than expected: Marie Sallé, who became the erotic counterpoint to La Camargo when she lightened her pannier, corset and wig to perform on stage… and we don’t know if anything else, since apparently she was only wearing a light muslin robe rolled to her body, similar to a Grecian tunic.25 The presence of a woman whose body was glimpsed through subtle layers of gauze had no erotic interpretation, but instead was intended to free the dancers from unnecessary ‘props’ that did not facilitate their movement, nor did adequately characterize them for roles that were often camouflaged under the fashion of those days. In Marie Sallé’s portrait by Van Loo26 we find a face that, as Carlo Blasis would describe when referring to the ideal attitude of the dancers, shows “decent voluptuousness and ‘abandon’.”27 The neckline of her dress shows, as we see, her charms without any timidity.
With the appearance on stage of short Grecian tunics and naked male torsos that allowed the dancers to boast of their strong musculature, we can only wonder what happened to those safety pants. While dancers had been required to follow the rules governing decency in every theatre, there had always been moralists scrutinizing under their skirts, anxious to see too much and criticize the artists; Antoine Dauvergne28 went too far praising the technical prodigies of Mlle Coulon, who “shows at least ten times, in very long pirouettes, the highest button of her underwear; she was very applauded.”29 Fortunately, it is to be supposed that, years later, once the skirts had been shortened to almost infinity and the public, artists and businessmen understood that the body of the dancers was to be seen and admired, not impudently desired, the responsible authorities might look the other way… and perhaps the dancers would wear a maillot. Particularly ironic are the numerous illustrations of that period preserved at the Jerome Robbins Dance Collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, ridiculing the Bishop of Durham and the Duke of Queensberry for censoring some performances.30 In 1798, in front of the House of Lords, the Bishop denounced Mlle Parisot –who apparently lifted her legs higher than usual at the time– for immorality in her interpretation of Le Triomphe de l’Amour. The consequence was that theatrical businessmen changed the nude colour of the inner maillots for a more obvious white,31 thus avoiding confusing the ‘sinful’ eye that believed to see a naked body under the costume. This today called a “maillot”, or adjusted body that the dancers used to wear under the stage costume, also has its own anecdote: its name probably comes from Mr. Maillot, a bonnetier –hat maker– who supplied the Opera in the 1820s, who made knitted underwear that moulded the legs of the dancers.32
Larousse Dictionary explains maillot as “tight-fitting clothing worn directly on the skin by dancers, gymnasts, acrobats, etc.”, and it adds in the meaning “academic maillot”, a garment of a much later creation, from the 20th century: “a one-piece maillot that encloses the dancer’s body, from the feet to the neck, as well as the arms.”33 A word that is already used everywhere to name a garment used by dancers all over the world and that, with its obligatory use under the skirt, planted the seed of what we will later call tutu, inasmuch as it will imply a complete body –with an inner part, in the shape of a panty– to which the skirt is sewn. From the beginning, the number of layers that built that semi-transparent skirt seemed to be directly related to dancer’s decency: the usual number of layers could be between 5 and 10, although some of skirts incorporated up to 15 or 16 superimposed layers of fabric, which we suppose would practically prevent the audience from even trying to guess any movement of legs; moreover, the weight of so many meters of fabric would hardly let the skirt rise when moving.34 The tutu, with time, went from being a problem of decency for some dancers to becoming their greatest ally, as it gave them a certain aura of purity, almost chastity, which prevented any designer or choreographer from pressing them to show more than they wished. In 1903, Mlle Eva Sarcy refused to play Salome in the ballet of Hérodiade35 at the Théâtre de la Gaîté in Paris dressed in a tunic, surely afraid of having to take it off completely in the famous Dance of the Seven Veils.36 The dancer imposed her right to wear a tutu on stage, as she had already done dancing the same piece in Bordeaux, although this time backed by a court order; thus, her decency was not called into question.
The Spanish dancers who some years earlier had made the bolero fashionable did not show more centimetres of skin than the other performers, although only by the intention of their dances and their less athletic bodies, they already displayed a different air on stage. The differences with the French were obvious, and Gautier would highlight even the most academic distinctions in their dancing: “Their way –would say Gautier about the Spaniards– has no connection whatsoever with that of the French school. In this case, the immobility and perpendicularity of the torso are expressly recommended; the body hardly participates in leg movements. In Spain […] it is the body that dances, it is the lower back that curls up, the sides that bend, the waist that twist with a softness of an Indian dancer[37] or a snake. In the inverted poses, the dancer’s shoulders will almost touch the head; the arms, pale and dead, have a flexibility, a softness of a knotted scarf; it seems that the hands can barely lift and make the ivory castanets babble with golden braided cords; and yet, when the time comes, young jaguar jumps follow this voluptuous languor, and prove that these bodies, soft as silk, wrap steel muscles”38.
3.6 - Different ways of posing in attitude. Drawings by Casartelli for Blasis Traité élémentaire…, 1820.
Imagination was triggered leaving the spectator, while unable to see what was happening under their costumes, to imagine provocative and novel evolutions. The costumes of these female dancers differed only slightly from those of other artists of the time, but a small detail added the necessary mischief to their performance when they were dancing with their partners: their ears (small and alert to the sound of the castanets), showing out of the head band with which the other European dancers also arranged their hair. The flowers, combs and kiss-curls that framed their beautiful faces provided the definitive touch of frivolity, although these ladies showed little more than the ballerina on pointe. Meanwhile, their partners wore –unlike the other European male dancers– a fitted taleguilla, or tight breeches, similar to that of the bullfighter’s costumes, which