ACTRESSES AND THE MISE EN SCÈNE Before the movement for historical authenticity took hold, the cloth and decoration of theatrical costume alone signalled the dramatic role: black velvet and white satin dresses, point lace, and stomacher for the tragic line; pink, blue, and white satin dresses with feathers, fans, and veils for comedy; and scarlet or buff frocks with blue or green ribbons, crucifix pendant, and french head dress for melodrama.5 Costuming for the illegitimate stage also had conventions of fabric and drapery signalling another range of parts The uncorsetted below-the-knee diaphanous gown worn by Marie Taglioni in La Sylphide (1832) is credited with setting the standard for countless female roles that followed The diaphanous fabrics and floating lines of ballet dresses in the 1830s were introduced to enhance the choreographic effect of Romantic plots, but it is clear from engravings and lithographs of danseuses that what was described as ethereality was seen as transparency, and that it was the bodies as much as the dances of naiads, shades, and waternymphs that were prized By associating a skirt’s lightness, shortness, and looseness with the desirable qualities of femininity, ideal proportion, and grace, choreography and costuming worked together to please the ubiquitous voyeur By freeing the torso from stiff boning, the costumes also signified a refusal to suffer and be still; the well-disciplined mind and well-regulated feelings that were associated with tight lacing gave way to connotations of loose morals and easy virtue, which also fuelled the misapprehensions of performers’ accessibility and sexual availability favoured by men.6 Evidence abounds of how these costumes appeared on stage and in the imaginative fantasy of spectators What could previously be displayed only through cross-dressing could now be revealed peeka-boo in feminine roles In a famous portrayal of Fanny Elssler (La Volière), the dancer alights from a jump in fifth position; her four layered skirt drifts down after her, the buildup of transparencies revealing the least at the hip, the most at the knee In response to such spectacles, Sam Ward commented: [Elssler] is a charming dancer The ideal of a fascinating mistress… Her eyes charm the Pit and Boxes by a mightier spell than the boa constrictor’s He who yields to her influence must, for that moment, become a voluptuary Her influence is sensual, her ensemble the incarnation of seductive attraction.7 Even a morally unblemished dancer such as Taglioni is depicted in a low décolleté off-the-shoulder gown, with transparent skirts clearly 109