How to squeeze 60 tutus into a four-foot-high flip-top trunk: Larch Miller and Dorothy Cummings see to it that the women of New York City Ballet always look their best onstage.

How can a ballet company of some ninety dancers with more than two hundred ballets in its repertoire perform a full length ballet in New York City one week, and in Copenhagen, Paris, or Palermo the next? One explanation applies to every major company in the world: It has some dutiful, attentive wardrobe mistresses.

New York City Ballet is a case in point. Even if its touring is limited to its summer stay in Saratoga in upstate New York; however, the logistical challenges of taking the company on the road are virtually the same, whether the location is two hundred or two thousand miles away. The Saratoga programs usually consist of some twenty ballets. That means more than 400 costumes, headpieces, shoes, leotards, and tights to clean, repair, transport, and keep track of. And that's just the women's costumes. Men's costumes are handled separately.

Responsibility for the care and cataloging of all the women's costumes and accompanying accessories, along with the task of organizing them for tours, rests with Larch Miller, women's wardrobe supervisor, and Dorothy (Dottie) Cummings, the company's wardrobe mistress. The women's wardrobe department, along with the men's, is part of NYCB's twenty-person costume shop, based at Lincoln Center.

Miller joined the company about five years ago, after raising a family and spending years making costumes and supervising costume departments for theatrical productions in her native Boston and on Broadway. Cummings spent twelve years with the costume department of New York City Opera before joining NYCB in 1992.

It's evident that they love what they do and particularly enjoy doing it for the dancers at NYCB. They radiate a motherly warmth as they concern themselves with the many details of their work: reconstructing costumes, repairing broken zippers, sewing elastic straps in just the right places. Fitting a young dancer's, costume for A Midsummer Night's Dream, they take delight in her reaction to the four-foot tail sprouting from her backside.

Although they don't teach the dancers or create movements for them, Miller and Cummings know their bodies as well as choreographers and coaches do. They use that knowledge to provide their dancers with the utmost confidence in whatever they will wear as a second skin in performance. They also know the ballets as well as the critics do and are full of the most wonderful anecdotes about the dancers, the dances, and the world of ballet. In the respectful professional style, they refer to their dancers with the title Miss-Miss Kistler, Miss Nichols. And their conversations with dancers suggest a mutual respect for each other's talents and work.

What occurs behind the scenes seems to take nearly as much energy, attention, and orchestration as what happens onstage. Their generally calm, assured manner belies their vast responsibilities. Thanks to their highly organized natures, they have over the years devised a system to handle any costume crisis effectively and efficiently, and it works very well.

The foundation of their system is a handwritten notebook of pertinent information on every ballet and its costumes; they call it "the bible" and in it they record a costume's history and keep track of its storage, whether-in the enormous costume room at the State Theater or in any of the several dressing rooms. Over the years this system has been improved to a point of cross-referenced perfection. Not a computer or electronic filing aid is in sight-just good old wide-ruled notebook paper, a threehole binder, and lots of multicolored pens.

The system works like this: A master list of costumes is indexed by ballet in the bible. This list corresponds to a label on the hanger for each costume, as well as one on the location cards in the main costume storage room. Each hanger label contains four elements: (1) a letter indicating the choreographer of the ballet for which the costume was created (B for George Balanchine, M for Peter Martins, R for Jerome Robbins, and V for the various choreographers who create ballets for the company); (2) a number denoting the name of the ballet; (3) the name of the dancer currently wearing the costume; and (4) a number identifying it among the total number of costumes for that ballet.

When costumes are pulled from the main storage room at the beginning of a season's run, all relevant information about it is logged in the bible, including the name of the dancer performing in it, repairs performed on it, and notations when it's sent out for cleaning. It's all a bit dizzying, but it allows the costume attendants to work with ease in the knowledge that everything is where it should be at any given moment. Should a ballet be inserted into a program at the last minute, the wardrobe mistresses will know immediately where its costumes are.

Such organization becomes imperative when the company goes on the road. Even the regular July season in Saratoga requires immense preparation. Miller and Cummings may require as many as eighteen large orange road boxes, resembling big closets on wheels, to hold costumes. New York State Theater carpenters custom designed such features as adjustable and removable rods with special latches to prevent the hangers from falling off the rods in transit. The packing process starts weeks before the company's departure date. Garments and accessories are reviewed and, if necessary, cleaned and repaired. These are then stored on the labeled hangers in the costume boxes, which will be transported by moving vans to Saratoga. Cummings's husband, an engineer, also designed a serviceable road box that houses the working necessities, such as a sewing machine, steamers, irons, ironing boards, spray bottles, detergents, a thread board, and fans - a work station away from the studio.

Having packed for Saratoga numerous times, Miller and Cummings know what works. Tutus travel best when stacked and packed open and flat. Sixty tutus can be squeezed into a four-foot-high, flip-top trunk; these get a bit flattened in the transfer, but if unpacked immediately and hung upside down, costumes will look perfect for performance. Miller and Cummings know all the tricks, and when they don't, they invent some more.

The costumes generally arrive in Saratoga the day before the opening performance. Miller and Cummings are joined by three women who will serve as dressers throughout the three-week run. On this first day they help set up shop, get their marching orders, and - if they're new-start to learn the ropes. One by one, each box sitting in a holding room is unpacked. The costumes, grouped by ballet, are placed, one by one, onto rolling garment racks which will be wheeled to the other side of the theater into the large dressing room one floor above stage level to be transferred to stationary racks that fill the room. In about four hours, a miniature version of the New York State Theater backstage has been created.

Several of the boxes, filled with costumes for the more lavish ballets, are not unpacked but transported to a rehearsal room on the stage level. This allows for easier preparation and costume changes during performances, especially when the garments are cumbersome, like the long, flowing gowns for Vienna Waltzes.

Makeshift overhead bars around the main dressing room are sectioned off by gaffer's tape and labeled for each dancer in the corps. That's where costumes for each performance are placed about an hour before curtain. A table is also sectioned off with tape into a myriad of squares labeled with each dancer's name. Headpieces and accessories for each ballet are placed there for each performance. Principal dancers and soloists enjoy a more private set of dressing rooms on stage level.

Miller and Cummings generally arrive at the theater about five hours before a performance begins. They see to it that all the costumes for that day's ballets are pulled from the racks and check to see if these are in good condition. Alterations repairs are made instantly when needed. Costumes that are particularly soiled or stained are cleaned. Fittings are made on understudies. When the company dressers arrive, wrinkles are pressed and steamed away, and a final check is made to see that each dancer has a costume and accessories for each ballet she'll be performing.

And then it's performance time. Corps dancers, in tights, pointe shoes, and full makeup, proceed from their dressing tables to the main dressing room, where they are zipped and hooked into their finery. Should an unexpected costume emergency arise. Miller or Cummings is there with a stitch in time and a solution for every problem. Completely dressed, the dancers make their way down a flight of stairs and await their entrance.

Organization and ordered planning ensure that costume changes are made with ease. At evening's end, costumes and headpieces are gathered, counted, and returned to their places. The process is repeated day after day for the length of the run.

At the end of the engagement, everything is repacked and moved to the next location or transported back to New York City to be prepared for the winter season.

It's a vital. fascinating, full-scale production played out behind the scenes. And although Miller and Cummings don't receive an ovation at the end of a performance, they, like so many talented theater artists who work out of the limelight, enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that they're an integral, if anonymous, part of a grand artistic tradition.