DRESSING the PART

Ballet dancers communicate through movement, utilizing flexibility and muscular agility to create poetic shapes. Their costumes are the icing on the cake, conveying character, time, and place, and enhancing the telling of a visual story.

n the same way that high fashion and streetwear influence how we dress, ballet has produced its own evolving trends ever since its origins in the Renaissance courts of France and Italy. Full-length ballets remain a spectacle, and costumes continue to add to the magic, either introducing a fresh look to a beloved perennial or helping to set the tone in a contemporary production.

Thinking outside the box is one of Miami City Ballet’s hallmarks, and MCB’s artistic director, Lourdes Lopez, is the visionary who leads the process.

When it comes to the technical aspects of a production, it can take 18 months to two-and-a-half years to bring ideas from the page to the stage. The vision is set