Dance Costume Anxiety. (Shriek, Gasp, Dun dun dun.)
Yes, if you have ever been in a dance recital, you know exactly what I am talking about.
My bad recital outfits? Highlights include cow print, pleather pants with red pleather vest, and matching cow print cowboy hat, as well as the two piece belly shirt, bring pink, feathered arms, somewhere between a flamingo and Toucan Sam.
As a general rule, there are certain years when you are safe from the scarring costumes.
The first years are those when you are a blossoming dancer. Dancers ages 3-6 are just too precious to deck out in crazy costumes, not to mention teachers know better than to put babies in anything that will anger their mothers. Trust me, mothers will freak out when their 4-year-old-soon-to-be-professional-ballerina is in a costume that makes them look anything but adorable, I mean they do pay $75.00 a month, and expect nothing but the best for their prima ballerina. My debuting costume? I was decked out in a Red Tulle number with white polka dots a la “Little Orphan Annie” and thought I was simply the best thing that had ever graced the stage. We have home videos to prove it.
The second time frame you are free of dangerous costumes is at the tale end of your high school dance career. By this point, usually you are in costumes that compliment your lines and “wow” the crowd. By now, you are a company dancer, as well as a student demonstrator and/or teacher, and your job is to sell the company so that parents of dancers can brag about “their” company, and also to lure new students to the company next year. I remember salivating at the thought of making it to senior company, even just for the costumes, never mind the status. Comprende?
Ages 7- 14 you are at risk for getting a dud costume. It is during these years that I began taking multiple dance classes, and always ending up with at least one costume that made my eyes twitch when I removed it from the costume bag. Think feathers, pleather, sequins, glow in the dark, 2 pieces, and offensively bright colors…often at one time.
It was at this age that I became very familiar with one of the golden dance costume lines fed to us by our teachers: “Oh, this costume is going to look amazing on stage.” Translated, this line means: “I know this costume is absolutely heinous, but I am the teacher and the only way I can get all of you into this atrocious thing is by lying and telling you that it magically transforms into a vision of tulle once you are on stage.”
These girls were most likely told that their costumes were going to “pop” on stage. The teacher most likely forgot to mention that they were going to resemble baby tigers with thunder thighs.
Same with this girl, but her’s will be a crowd favorite because when she lifts the skirt as shown, it will glow in the dark. I fell for that one...that was a rough year.
These girls were told that they were going to have props, so their costume was going to be the best one and the most fun for the crowd to watch. They forgot to mention the possibility of the shorts riding completely up their cheeks, and sharing a full wedgie with the entire audience. Oh, and be careful, the bottom of those boots are most likely slippery!
It was a reflective moment in my life when I found myself spitting the same line to my students that my teachers had once said to me. I admit, I felt a bit bad, but I honestly believed it was going to look cute on stage. I mean, it couldn’t look much worse!
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