Get the Look You Want for Competition

There are few things as amusing as playing dress-up. It’s thrilling to dig into a costume closet, pull out the sparkliest outfit, throw it on and twirl around the studio. Yet in the end, that’s just for kicks: Matching costumes to routines, especially competition numbers, is serious business. But while creating costumes for your kids takes a lot of time, effort and energy, there’s no reason it can’t be fun, too. Dance Teacher talked to four instructors about the tips, tricks, pitfalls and pratfalls involved in costuming for competition.

Are sequins a girl’s best friend? Some teachers think rhinestones, sequins and stunning fabrics are the key to catching the audience’s eye. “We do a lot of velvet since it looks extremely rich onstage,” says Stina Smith, director of Jersey Cape Dance and Gymnastics Academy in West Cape May, New Jersey. “Rhinestones also really make a big difference.”

While glitter and glamour are timeless, in recent seasons subtler costumes have also earned lavish praise. “We try not to have a Rockettes costume for every dance,” says Angie Guccione, director of Studio CAC in Hazelwood, Missouri. “Some of our plainest costumes have done really well because they seemed out of the ordinary. Last year, our biggest winner was a group of dancers who wore sports bras and shorts with material they wrapped around their bodies.” Terry Schulke, owner of and choreographer for Just Plain Dancin’ in Riverside, California, agrees. “During the last five years, the costumes that seem to stand out are the ones that don’t have a lot of stones,” she says. “Last year our dancers wore black lace tops and black pants. It fit the number. These days a third of our numbers don’t have stones on them.”

Kellie Plath, company director of Accent on Dance in Waukesha, Wisconsin, takes a philosophical approach: “We don’t rely solely on our costumes to stand out. They’re a key part [of our routines], but we don’t want the costumes to ‘out-dance’ the dancers. You want to stand out for a variety of reasons.”

While parents tend to keep close tabs on what their kids wear to school, sometimes when their little darlings get on stage, the rules go out the window. “You want to avoid JonBenet,” cautions Smith. “We try not to do the ‘sexy’ thing for the little ones, but we can still be edgy. We did a number called ‘Girls Gone Bad’ about good girls wanting to be bad to a medley of ‘bad’ songs: ‘Bad to the Bone,’ Michael Jackson’s ‘B.A.D.’ and a Rugrats song. They started out in pinafores, then two little girls came on in leather motorcycle jackets and the ‘good girls’ ripped their pinafores off and swung them up over their heads. You can get cutesy with it, as long as it’s still in good taste.”

Guccione makes sure her numbers stay age-appropriate both by choosing demure costumes and taking special care to select age-appropriate music. “Things are becoming so mature,” she concedes, “but we keep the costumes G-rated. We add a neat neckline and snazzy it up a little without making it too mature.” Plath concurs that the right music is key: “If you’re choosing age-

appropriate music, you’re not going to end up with inappropriate costumes.”

Although costumes often have sentimental value to the performers who wear them, some teachers encourage dancers to lend their costumes to colleagues, or perhaps even sell them back to the studio. Plath says that, at her studio, costumes pass back and forth between students’ hands: “Our students are good about letting us use their costumes again, even once they’ve graduated.”

Smith makes the arrangement formal. “I have contracts that the parents sign that say the kids have to sell the costumes back to us at a reasonable cost if they graduate or leave,” she says.  While she doesn’t always enforce the rule, she finds that many

parents are happy to recoup some of the costume costs. Schulke also asks some students to sell their costumes: “It helps the parents get more money to purchase new costumes for the next year.”

When ordering costumes, time is truly of the essence. “We once had 118 dancers in one number. A week before we were supposed to perform, the costume company told me the costumes were back ordered,” says Guccione. “Our dancers had to go on in leotards.” To avoid close calls, be sure to make a timeline for ordering. Set deadlines for each task, from selecting the costumes and collecting payment from parents to placing the order, in order to receive everything on time. Most teachers recommend ordering before the end of the year, both to ensure timely delivery and to take advantage of the early bird discounts that some companies offer.

After months of preparing just the right costumes for all your numbers, make sure nothing goes wrong during the big onstage moment by being prepared for some common accidents. Here’s what Angie Guccione recommends: “We always try to have someone with safety pins, bobby pins and a hot [glue] gun. And have a dress run. We once had a group who wore hairpieces they had not performed in. They put the pieces on and went straight to the stage. As they danced, three or four hairpieces flew

off and by the end of the number we were all laughing.”

Plath goes out of her way to make sure that the costumes stay on. “Sometimes if there’s enough time we sew dancers into their costumes,” she says. “Just pin everything, double-check everything. If the costume isn’t falling right or you don’t have the right undergarments, it can take away from the whole outfit. We always do a costume check before dancers go out on stage.” DT