Create a Fantastic Dance Costume With a Small Production Budget

In the professional theatre, large budgets allow for highly elaborate dance costumes which are designed and hand made by highly qualified professionals. However, it's very rare that dance schools and dance academies have the luxury of such extensive production budgets. For these shows, the leotard can form a great base for a highly effective and flexible costume that's excellent value for money.

There are several basic elements to consider when choosing a leotard for the basis of your dance costume. These are colour, material, texture and pattern, and whether the costume is for a male or female dancer.

The colour of the dance costume is a very easy and often a very cheap way to directly affect the emotion of the audience. Blue colours will create a cool feeling, whereas orange colours create a feeling of warmth. They can also be highly symbolic. For example, green is a powerful symbol of envy and red can be a potent symbol for anger.

A great idea is to use the colour of your dance costume to pick out an individual dancer. For example, imagine a dancer wearing a red leotard dancing alongside a chorus of dancers wearing white leotards. Effects such as this show how the dance costume can have a powerful effect over the dance without any specialist lighting.

Dance leotards are often only available in a small selection of colours which are predetermined by the manufacturer. However, there are a small number of dance retailers that produce make-to-order dance leotards and dance costumes.

This creates a massive opportunity to really explore the effect that costume can have on your dance. As well as significantly increasing the number of colours you can choose your leotard in, it also means that there is the possibility to use printed fabrics such as Rainbow, Zebra, Polka Dot and many more.

To give your dance costume the edge, it's important to focus on the small details. Dance accessories such as bun nets, hair pins and hair bands all play an important role in completing the dancer's costume. Where possible, colours that harmonize with the costume and with the theme of the dance should be chosen.

Footwear should also not be overlooked, as different types of dance will require different types of footwear. A chorus may find themselves wearing pointe shoes, soft ballet shoes, tap shoes, character shoes or even bare feet. If you have a chorus, then it's usually a good idea to make sure they all wear footwear that at least matches in colour unless they intentionally mismatch to create a particular effect for the audience.

Most dance retailers that provide a make-to-order service will also supply dance accessories. If not, then a good retailer should be able to recommend where you can get them. You may also find that they sell dancewear from other popular dance brands such as Roch Valley, Pineapple, Capezio and Bloch which is very useful as this can make the dance retailer you find your one stop shop for all your dancewear!