Marie Camargo was the first dancer to shorten her skirts. This enabled her audience to appreciate her intricate footwork. Her rival, Marie Salle, dared even further by discarding her petticoats to dance in a flimsy muslin dress. The French Revolution at the end of the 18th century also brought about changes in dancewear. Simple, lightweight, clinging robes inspired by Greek models became fashionable both on and off the stage. Also at this time, a man called Maillot, a costume maker and designer at the Paris Opéra, is said to have invented tights. These new fashions and inventions caused a great change in ballet practice clothes. Dancers finally found themselves in clothing that allowed for much greater freedom of movement and dance technique could develop beyond its previously limited boundaries.
This was further emphasized by the great dance teacher Carlo Blasis, who in 1820 published the technical manual
Trait Elementaire et Pratique de la Danse, which included drawings for which Blasis had posed, dressed in nothing but shorts and ballet shoes. Though Blasis did not recommend the wearing of only shorts as practice wear because the dancers might catch cold, he was very concerned with the specifics of practice clothing and designed official dancewear.
The dress worn by the pupils at their lessons was a bodice and skirt of white muslin, a black sash being worn around the waist. The dress of the males was a jacket which fits the shape close, with trousers, all of white cloth; round the waist a girdle of black leather is worn, confined and tightened by means of buckles.
The long, loose trousers had been replaced by knee breeches and silk hose since it had been decided that the long pants hid too many technical faults. Bournonville himself invented the "Bournonville slipper" for male dancers. Still worn today in all Bournonville ballets, these black slippers have a white, V-shaped vamp in the front, making for a better-looking, long and pointed foot.
By 1844, it was reported that the dancers of the Paris Opéra were appearing in ballet class in the following ;
The girls were bare-headed and, their arms were bare, a tight bodice. A very short, very bouffant skirt, made of net or striped muslin, reaches to the knees. Their thighs are hidden under large calico bloomers. The men, without neckties, with throats bare, wore short vests of white material and breeches reaching half way down the leg, fastened at the waist by a leather belt."
Victorian sensibilities caused a return to very elaborate dancewear. On stage in the 1890s, dance spectacle at its most lavish reigned supreme. Off stage in the rehearsal room, ballerinas wore quite complicated outfits:
The bell-shaped Romantic dress of the mid-1800s gave way to the tutu at the end of the 19th century. Connoisseurs of ballet, the Russians wanted to see the new technical feats and fancy footwork of their ballerinas. The new long, floppy, 16 layer tutus reached to the knee and allowed the female dancers much greater mobility in such technically demanding ballets as Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and Paquita.
It was in the early years of the 20th century that dance clothes began to change to those that are commonly used today. Soon many classical ballerinas, including Anna Pavlova, began to wear the practical, uncluttered tunic for rehearsals. At the same time, musical comedy and revue dancers started to practise in bare legs, while others adopted the trendy one-piece bathing suit.
Modern dancers, on the other hand, wore the new leotard for their practice wear. the original leotard consisted of a close-fitting suit of knitted jersey, which reached to the wrists and ankles; the woman's version came with a short fringed skirt. Today, the leotard is the accepted uniform of dancers around the world and is designed in many attractive patterns, colours and materials.
Bare legs were never very popular with dancers for practice sessions since the leg muscles must be kept continually warm. Today dancers wear not only leotards and tights but also wool leg warmers and/or plastic pants over their tights in order to keep their muscles warm and supple.
