Beyond Performance: Marisa Cerveris, Dancewear Designer
Cerveris, at a fitting (courtesy of Cerveris)
Marisa Cerveris’s idea for a dancewear line began as a young dancer studying at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. “The leotards did not adhere to the small of my back and the fabric would billow out,” she says about the dancewear available at the time. “As dancers we work so hard to sculpt and shape our bodies. I thought it was crazy that the leotards didn’t accentuate that.”
Cerveris, who has no formal training in clothing design, acquired a basic knowledge of sewing and fabrics from her mother, who would make clothing and Halloween costumes for Cerveris and her siblings growing up in Huntington, West Virginia. It wasn’t however, until the dancer joined New York City Ballet that she began seriously experimenting with designing. Cerveris says she took apart her garments and those of fellow company members, tweaking their fit and getting feedback from the other dancers who served as her fit models.
She also gleaned a lot of information from watching and listening to the various costume designers while dancing with NYCB in Europe, and on Broadway (in The Phantom of The Opera). “We would always go for costume fittings at Barbara Matera’s shop in Manhattan. I would listen to Barbara speaking with Peter Martins and talking about costume design and showing fabrics as they were fitting us,” says Cerveris. “I got to see firsthand the creative and collaborative process, and all that seeped in.”
When she retired from the stage in 2000, Cerveris received a grant from Career Transition For Dancers. She purchased her first industrial sewing machine and set to work in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to develop her line of ByMarisa designs which have no elastic or center seams.
“My approach to designing dancewear is the same as my approach to being a dancer: line is most important to me,” says Cerveris. “I am basically trying to paint the body with fabric.”
At first, she used to worry she didn’t have enough to say that was different in dancewear design. But the lyrics from Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sunday in the Park with George—“Anything you do, let it come from you, and it will be new”—inspired her to get out of her own way. “This is what I have to offer. It is pure and it is sincere and it comes from me,” she says. The uniqueness of ByMarisa dancewear led the costume designers of Robert Altman’s 2003 film The Company to her to give the film’s dancers a signature look. More recently representatives of TV’s Dancing with the Stars did the same. She has now expanded the line to include workout wear for yoga and Pilates. “Everything I have become is because of my former career.”
Originally published in Beyond Performance, a supplement to Dance Magazine and Dance Teacher, September 2010
