Boys' Ballet Costumes: Roles

The roles and thus the costumes in these ballets are higly varied. Some ballets are realistic. Others are highly styalized. There are some parts for boys in period dress. Other parts range from princes to clowns, mice, soldiers, and much more. Several classic ballets have large numbers of such parts for children, including boys. HBC has numerous images of boys costumed for such parts, but often the title of the ballet in which they appeared is unavailable. The costumes of course varied greatly with many different productions. Professional ballets had elaborate costumes. School or local productions, however, with limited budgets had to use consideranle imagination in creating costumes.

Children

The most obvious parts for children are depictions of children. The most famous scene full of children is the News Year party in the Nutcracker with Clara, her brother, and many other children.

Clowns

One of the parts that children often love to play are the clowns. All children loce clowns and like to dress up as clowns. There are clowns in a number of operas. Certainly Piachi, even the The Nutcracker. Clowns are usually men, so boys are most suitable for the clown rioles. As most ballet students are girls, it is usually the girls who play the roles. Costume designers love the clown costumes as they have so much latitude in designing the costumes. Thus the boys dancing clown roles often have interesting, original costumes.

Mice

A wide variety of animals are depicted in ballets. Perhaps the most famous is the Rat King in the Nutcracker or the wolf in Peter and he Wolf. One of the most common animals are mice. They are perfect for the ballet and for children. They are perceived as mincing or scurrying about and thus there movements cam be easily styalized for ballet movements. In addition, as mice or small, thdey are perfectly suit for children's parts.


Figure 2.--One of the most common parts for boys are princes. Many ballets have prince parts. Usually they are danced by a older teenager or young man, but many schools use younger boys for these parts. Notice that the girl,is wearing toe shoes, but the boy regular dance slippers.

Princes

Perhaps no male ballet roles are better known than those of princes. mPrinces or princes are the center of many classic operas such as The Nutcracker or Sleeping Beauty. There are many balets with princes. Perhaps the most famous are the princes in: the Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White. Unlike some roles, the performance of these ballets requires a boy to perform the prince roles. The actual prince costumes are quite varied. One common feature, however, is that princes are often costumed in white tights. Because of the small number of boys doing ballet in some countries, however, occasionally a girl even has to dance the prince roles.

Soldiers

Many ballets involved fanvily costumed soldiers. Often groups or ranks od soldiers are involved. One would assume boys would dance the soldier roles. Until very recently there were no female soldiers. The shortage of boy dancers, however, means that girls sometimes need to dance these roles.





Christopher Wagner





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Created: July 28, 2000
Last updated: February 9, 2002