ballerina

Updated: June 9, 2025

The costume of the prima ballerina assoluta in our grandfather's days was something like an umbrella and a pair of braces: the umbrella shrank to the en-tout-cas, and the en-tout-cas to the open parasol; unless the movement is arrested, in the course of time a lampshade will be reached, and ultimately, say, fifty years hence, the Genée of the period will have nothing more of skirt and petticoat than some kind of fringe round the waist, indicating, like our coccygeal vertebrae, or the rudimentary limbs of the whale, a mere useless atrophied apparatus.

Edward Fordham Spence - Our Stage and Its Critics : By "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

[Footnote *: Per esempio vendra fora la ballerina, colla rocca, filando, ò con un secchio

Giovanni-Andrea Gallini - A Treatise on the Art of Dancing