How to Dress Dancers: Costume Techniques for Dance

Rating:
Summary: A little inaccessible, but very helpful
Review: I bought this book looking for some help in making basic Classical and Romantic tutus. The book is dominated by illustrations, and the instructions could have been written a little more clearly -- but after re-reading them very carefully, I decided that all the information I wanted was actually there. It's just a little inaccessible.

The book describes how to make basic garments (tutus, leotards, etc.) without a pattern, and then has lots of illustrations to show how you might modify them for particular styles and dances. So, to get any use out of this book, you'll need to buy some cheap material, and draft your own patterns with the help of the book and perhaps a little trial and error. If you absolutely have to be provided with a proper pattern, you'll need to look elsewhere for it. Even so, the example illustrations may be helpful in adapting a basic costume to suit a particular dance, once you've obtained the basic pattern elsewhere.

The content of the book is just as old as I am -- first published in 1975 -- which is probably why Lycra (tm) isn't mentioned in the book at all! So if you're determined to use Lycra, you'll have to figure out for yourself what differences it will make to the design and construction.

Overall, this is a very good book which could really use a new revision to take account of new materials, and to make the text a little more accessible.

Rating:
Summary: A little inaccessible, but very helpful
Review: I bought this book looking for some help in making basic Classical and Romantic tutus. The book is dominated by illustrations, and the instructions could have been written a little more clearly -- but after re-reading them very carefully, I decided that all the information I wanted was actually there. It's just a little inaccessible.

The book describes how to make basic garments (tutus, leotards, etc.) without a pattern, and then has lots of illustrations to show how you might modify them for particular styles and dances. So, to get any use out of this book, you'll need to buy some cheap material, and draft your own patterns with the help of the book and perhaps a little trial and error. If you absolutely have to be provided with a proper pattern, you'll need to look elsewhere for it. Even so, the example illustrations may be helpful in adapting a basic costume to suit a particular dance, once you've obtained the basic pattern elsewhere.

The content of the book is just as old as I am -- first published in 1975 -- which is probably why Lycra (tm) isn't mentioned in the book at all! So if you're determined to use Lycra, you'll have to figure out for yourself what differences it will make to the design and construction.

Overall, this is a very good book which could really use a new revision to take account of new materials, and to make the text a little more accessible.

Rating:
Summary: How to dress dancers: how do you dress dancers?
Review: I went to the library to get this book out when I needed to make costumes for my daughters dance recital. It was an amatuer production of Swan Lake; so I needed some help making the classical tutus. Unfortunately, the book hrdly helped at all. The pictures and/or instructions were very hard to understand, and Iam no oaf so I do understand a lot. But this? I didn't understand at all. They did have some very nice ideas for costumes, I thought.