Ghosts of Nijinksy
Figure skating began to
captivate me and my friends when we were 8. We watched Sonja Henie in the
movies, we were taken to ice shows, we took lessons, and we had strong views
about what we wished to wear while practicing our axels at the public rink.
Figure skating wasn't a real sport, comradely and combative like children's ice
hockey, which we played in boring skates and unlovely clothes on a frozen pond.
It was a romantic and competitive display, emphatically a girl thing. Adorable
outfits were a large part of the whole idea.
They obviously still
are, and not just for girls. My interest in skating withered and died before I
was 12, but my evergreen interest in outfits keeps me staring avidly at what is
being worn on the ice at the Winter Olympics, even though I now lack much grasp
of the rules of the game. I mainly notice that things have come a long way
since I was 8. Classic figure skating is now complicated by the development of
sensational ice dancing in several categories. The old-fashioned romantic
display has been profitably invigorated with sex, fashion, and progressive
technical excitement, to say nothing of unceasing soap-operatic drama played
out among the participants and spun out in the media.
Women's costumes have shed all fake-Nordic
touches suggesting conventional winter or conventional cuteness. Gone are the
red-lined, black-velvet circular skirts worn with flower-embroidered, white
sweaters; the long-sleeved, tight jackets with fur trim at neck and wrists; the
little fur hats and snug bonnets. Ice isn't cold any more--it's hot. Costumes
suggest the disco dance floor or the hotel ballroom, except when they're
suggesting the Frederick's of Hollywood catalog, high-school Shakespeare, or
outer space.
Most notable is the way
men's costumes for this quasisport have largely kept their dignity, while
women's have burst into hysterics. The physical risks have become very great
for male ice dancers, but their clothes stay conservative. When they don't,
scathing commentary appears in the press. The young Russian gold medalist Ilya
Kulik got raves for his dazzling skating and nothing but scorn for the
yellow-and-black giraffe-print shirt he wore, with more scorn for the gauzy
wings on the abstractly designed torso of his other costume. Artur Dmitriev,
another Russian gold medalist, also got negative press for his plunging
neckline and wrapped sash, apparently too outrageous for pairs skating. The
ghost of Vaslav Nijinsky seems to haunt these young Russians in their search
for supreme skill at multiple turns in midair and in their willingness to wear
brilliant super-ballet gear.
The Russian Ballet convention for male costume
was established all over the world in the last century, and it allowed any sort
of glorious finery above the waist, even with long, plain legs below. Later,
under the innovative direction of Sergei Diaghilev, Nijinsky's "Rose" and
"Faun" costumes, among others, gave rise to a host of abstract creations for
the male body. These have appeared on the dance stage throughout this century,
and are now to be seen on Damien Woetzel, Mark Morris, and others. But none of
this imaginative freedom seems to have reached the ice, except on Russians.
On the other hand, a
couple of weeks ago the costume of Frenchman Philippe Candeloro alluded to the
tradition of theater rather than that of dance. Candeloro also avoided
prolonged whirls in midair, offering some dashing 17 th -century mimed
swordplay instead. Thigh-high black boots rose startlingly up from his skates,
set off by a laced-up white doublet with big slashed sleeves and a big collar.
His long hair and mustache, his black gloves, and his sturdy, buff-clad behind
made his leaps and lunges most historical, the whole thing being quite rare for
a free-style skating solo. He called it "D'Artagnan," but it could have been
Cyrano, or anybody in Molière. Shakespeare was gaudily invoked a few days later
by a French couple doing "Romeo and Juliet" in matching bright blue, bejeweled
Renaissance outfits.
But in most cases the ballroom convention
governs the clothes for traditional pairs skating and affects ice dancing too,
keeping male ice performers looking fairly sober. Men's skating costumes are
strictly simple and symmetrical, beginning with long, black trousers that
invoke Fred Astaire, even when worn with a loose, rolled-sleeved, open-necked
black shirt, or with various Star Trek effects above the waist. Male
skating costume, like male evening dress, is still meant to offset the
fantastic extremes of the women's costumes, which run to exposure, asymmetry,
and fluttering ornament, just like Ginger Rogers' dancing dresses in the early
1930s. Sparkles now seem OK for everything, even for men's black pants and neat
jackets. Metallic fabric, rhinestones, or sequins may coat both him and her,
the better to mesmerize us equally as we track them flashing past. Not for
skates, though--no glitz on the business end.
There is an astonishing
array of inventions in women's costumes, where all the most dangerous aesthetic
risks are currently being taken. But some things are constant. For pairs
skating, women's skates must be white, and unfortunately very big. These used
to look fine with fur-trimmed jackets, but they look quite different with
mini-ball-dresses or virtual underwear, and they looked grotesque on tiny
Oksana Baiul in her pink swan-queen outfit at Lillehammer, Norway, in 1994--the
too-direct reference to traditional ballet suddenly made her skates look
ungainly. For ice dancing, skates are often flesh-colored to match the tights,
and the leg may sweep all the way to the end.
Costumes have more scope,
however; some tend toward approximations of current fashion, with many
ponytails, little bandeaux under boleros, and several bare midriffs, along with
S&M trappings in better or worse arrangements, and a range of recent and
remote historical allusions. Whatever the costume, it must go with tights and
skates, it should enhance the skater's performance, and the rules say it must
have a skirt. But this can mean two panels fore and aft, eight overlapping
panels, a flippy circle, a foot-long sheath with a slit, a stiff 6-inch flange,
a knee-length drift of chiffon. Above the waist, we might see an asymmetrical
patch of salmon pink and another of black making one breast look heavy and the
other one look absent; or we can see the simple black-velvet scoop-neck top
above the fluttering yellow silk skirt worn by Oksana Kazakova, the two colors
perfectly balanced by the two flashing white skates below. A dress in any
bright single color tends to be great; two colors in several patchy sections
tends to be dreadful, especially when mixed with patches of bare skin. Slanted
hemlines are bad; slit skirts are good. A ponytail with a lot of feathers or
fluff holding it together is no good; hair that neatly caps the head, whether
in a bob or a bun, is very good. Anything that looks as if it might get in a
partner's mouth and eyes or slap his face is bad; any material that caresses
the thighs is better than a fabric that smacks them. I could go on; but I'll
wait until next winter.
