Creating the Tap Waltz Costume for the Dance Competition
Hi guys, so today's post is all about the creation of a very specific type of costume for my daughter's dance competition.
The type of costume that I am creating is a tap waltz costume. I understand that this is a fairly specialised costume, not often used in very many types of competitions around the world, but it seems to be quite specialised here in Australia and sometimes New Zealand as well.
Basically, what this is, is a waltz done in tap shoes. A slow tap, sometimes it is called as well.
The requirements for this are obviously music that is in a waltz beat, and the costume is usually a long, full skirt, normally about mid-calf. Actually, too much longer and you can trip!
The costume can be made with or without wings. Generally, it's best to have something attached to your fingers — either the skirt itself attached to your fingers or a separate section called wings that attaches to your fingers — so it flows and floats around as you dance.
It's quite similar to a ballroom costume in many respects.
They are normally extremely expensive.
Why Are These Costumes So Expensive?
One of the main reasons these costumes are so expensive is simply the amount of labour involved. They take a surprisingly long time to construct, and they also require a LOT of fabric and decoration.
To give you an idea, here is a rough breakdown of what went into this particular costume.
Also please not this is SO SO SO SO SO much more sparkly on stage. i can't even describe how blingy this is from the audience. blinding bright.
Time taken
Altering an existing pattern to create the pattern I needed – 1 hour Cutting the leotard fabric – 1 hour Sewing the leotard together – 1 hour Laying out, patterning and cutting the chiffon skirt – 1 hour Sewing the chiffon skirt panels together – 20 minutes Basting the enormous circle skirt onto the leotard – 1 hour Hemming the skirt – 1 hour Positioning and basting all the appliqués onto the front and back – 2 hours Stoning the costume – 2–3 hours Making the wings – 2 hours Making the headpiece – 1 hour
So, even without counting all the little bits and pieces in between, that is around 13–14 hours of work.
And then there are the materials.
Materials used
½ metre coloured Lycra ½ metre lining ½ metre mesh 7 metres of chiffon Approximately 3 metres of elastic Appliqués Rhinestones Thread Stretch sewing-machine needles Fine needles suitable for the chiffon Fishing line for the skirt hem Various other small sewing and finishing supplies
The seven metres of chiffon probably gives the best indication of just how much fabric is hiding in that skirt!
Cutting it was an adventure in itself. Chiffon has absolutely no interest in lying nicely where you put it, so I eventually had the enormous pieces spread across the floor and literally held in position with sticky tape while I marked and cut them.
Once you add together the fabric, appliqués, rhinestones and all the other supplies — and then add more than a dozen hours of labour — it becomes much easier to understand why professionally made costumes like these can be so expensive.
The general market for Tap Waltz costumes and why they are rare.
Now, obviously, I am quite slow at creating these, and I did need to have some help due to my hand injury. I find a lot of these steps quite challenging, but we just get moving with what we can get moving.
However, even a professional seamstress would still need quite a large amount of this time to create a costume like this. Even if it wasn't for my hand, this is not something that you can get done in an hour.
Just as an example, I can create — or used to be able to create before my hand injury — a basic leotard in about 30 minutes. It's not that hard. Quickly zip out some Lycra and lining, sew it together, put some elastic in it, Bob's your uncle. Easy done.
But this costume is a huge amount of work.
Sometimes we end up with parents who don't understand how much these things cost and balk at the idea of spending hundreds of dollars on a costume. Why would it take so long to create? Surely there's only $50 worth of fabric in there, so why would I need to spend several hundred dollars on a costume like this?
now there is NOT 50 dollars of fabric, it was probably more like:
Leotard fabrics – $50 Bulk appliqués – $20 Rhinestones – $30 (this could be considerably more if you chose to use Swarovski crystals) Chiffon – 7 metres at $6 per metre = $42 Elastic – $5 Thread, needles, fishing line and other incidentals
So even using chiffon that I managed to get on sale, that's already $147 plus the other incidentals.
And the chiffon price can easily be considerably higher. If you were using something like stretch mesh at around $15 per metre, seven metres alone would cost $105.
So no, there isn't $50 worth of fabric and decoration hiding in this costume. Even with me buying reasonably carefully and getting the chiffon on sale, the materials themselves are already around $150 before accounting for every little extra that goes into making it.
Sometimes one has to tell parents exactly why they might have to spend several hundred dollars if they want a tap waltz costume
And I mean, obviously, if they don't have the money to spend on that, that is completely reasonable, by the way.Who really does have $700 or $1,000 to spend on a kid's costume that they might wear six times? they are very expensive.
The secondhand market for tap waltz costumes is extraordinarily thin as well. If you see a tap waltz costume, as a general rule our dance studio instructor says that you need to buy it and keep it for later, because if it fits and you like it, you might not find another one again when you actually need it.
So I decided it was best that we just create our own for my two girls, who are going to need them in the coming years. So that is what I have to do.
And at least I know that I will definitely make back the cost of the materials, and then some, when I choose to sell these on once my kids outgrow them or outgrow the dance they were made for.
Tips for Keeping the Costs Down
Now, obviously, this was a fairly extensive costume. A big full-circle skirt, wings, leotard, lots of appliqués, lots of crystals and lots of little bits involved in putting the whole costume together.
There are, however, some basic ways you could keep the costs down.
You could quite simply find a cheap secondhand lyrical leotard that looked the business for the top and attach a half skirt to the back of it. You could make that from, say, five metres of chiffon. At the price I paid of $6 a metre, that's another $30 worth of fabric, plus the time taken to make it, of course.
Add some decoration, attach the skirt or some simple wings to the wrists, and you'd have a fairly simple tap waltz costume.
Obviously, this could still end up being a couple-of-hundred-dollar costume even when you're trying to keep the costs down. But it is certainly an option if you just need some sort of costume to get on stage.
At the end of the day, not everything has to be perfect.
In fact, I will be making another one a bit like this for a friend's daughter. She doesn't have the budget for an expensive costume and didn't think she was going to be able to do a tap waltz because her budget didn't allow for one.
So I'm going to see what I can do to help her get maximum look for minimum buck.
Anyway this post is now WAY WAY WAY too long... long... so i will sign off. AI USEAGE declaration is as follows. i dictated this post in GPT and told it not to change any of my words. and then edited the format by hand. So none of the text was created with GPT, just a straight dictation due to my hand injury :-)
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