{"title":"Unfolding a vision embedded in a garment: Three tools from a toolbox for generating performance from costume design","authors":"Christina Lindgren","doi":"10.1386/scp_00047_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scp_00047_1","url":null,"abstract":"Reflection and discussion on ‘how’ costume performs seems to be at the centre of inquiry of the research within the field of costume design, as presented at the Critical Costume conferences and the journal Studies in Costume and Performance. In various ways,\u0000 costumes play an important role in most performances, a costume ‘does’ things, it performs and has agency. In recent years, we have experienced an increasing number of performances where costume acts as the starting element for a performance and, more often, we hear of costume\u0000 designers instigating and leading creative processes in making performances. Costume-generated performances are about to be considered an established genre. This research report aims to share some ‘tools’ that form a methodological framework ‐ a toolbox ‐ for generating\u0000 performance with costume design as a starting point. The examples are drawn from my professional practice, informed by work undertaken in workshops held in the frame of the artistic research project ‘Costume Agency’ (2018‐21), which I have been leading in collaboration with\u0000 dramaturg and curator Sodja Lotker. I have found useful concepts in new materialism, as a critical framework that has opened up a new understanding of how humans and non-human actors interact and have adapted them for my use as a costume designer, director and researcher. The tools I focus\u0000 on here are the following three: notions of ‘agency’ in the context of costume design; the concept of ‘situated knowledges’; and ‘visual dramaturgy' from the performing arts theory. These tools have proven to be useful in the processes of generating performance\u0000 from the costume in my own practice and are offered in this research report to the wider community of costume researchers for further debate and development.","PeriodicalId":273630,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Costume & Performance","volume":"24 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120906038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Greenham: Costume, memory and activism in outdoor performance","authors":"Valentina Ceschi, Kate Lane","doi":"10.1386/scp_00049_3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scp_00049_3","url":null,"abstract":"This visual essay illustrates the transformative, performative and narrative potential costume can have in the context of outdoor site-responsive work, by looking at Ceschi + Lane’s recent R&D project, Greenham. The project included two performances that took place\u0000 on Greenham Common, the site of a former RAF and American Army base in the English countryside, which is now common land. Greenham is also the former site of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace camp, set up in 1981 to protest against the British government allowing American cruise missiles\u0000 to be stored at the base. In response to the scarred landscape of the post-Cold War dereliction and the contested history of Greenham Common, we created costumes that embodied imaginative and provocative ideas around landscape and memory, the body and its environment and women’s relationship\u0000 to power. These costumes acted as critical intervention and commentary in a public space. This visual essay provides retrospective analysis of these costumes, their effect on the performers and their contribution to the dramaturgy of the site-responsive performance. Drawing on contemporary\u0000 references, it attempts to articulate the work’s contribution to the wider discussion around costume’s agency and costume as carrier of meaning in public spaces and as part of site-responsive performance practice.","PeriodicalId":273630,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Costume & Performance","volume":"2013 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128015681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Relations between body and clothing in performance: Costume as an activator of bodily actions","authors":"Joana Imparato","doi":"10.1386/scp_00045_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scp_00045_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article reflects upon the relationship between body and costume in the character ‘Woman from the Past’ in the production Life and Times of Carlos & Carlos directed by Emílio Di Biasi in 1987 in São Paulo, Brazil. Drawing on the account of the\u0000 performer Gaby Imparato about her scenic dress, I investigate the dynamics of body‐costume relationship based on Bodymedia Theory, which reassesses the concept of body concerning design processes and practices in the production of scenic costumes and in the costume design research literature.\u0000 The theory provides tools to discuss costumes and bodies intertwined in a co-defined relationship while onstage, inviting us to rethink predetermined resources in costume production. The performer’s account helps to verify how the costume designer’s intentions and stimuli offered\u0000 to the body onstage, predefined in the costume design, find other paths to developing scenic actions. This proposition allows me to discuss the relationship between body and costume onstage when understood as an articulator of perception and action. Thus, I can enunciate costume as an activator\u0000 of bodily actions in rehearsals and on the scene.","PeriodicalId":273630,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Costume & Performance","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133454095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spectral Characters: Genre and Materiality on the Modern Stage, Sarah Balkin (2019)","authors":"Marlis Schweitzer","doi":"10.1386/scp_00042_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scp_00042_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Spectral Characters: Genre and Materiality on the Modern Stage, Sarah Balkin (2019)Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 198 pp.,ISBN 978-0-47213-148-8, h/bk, $65","PeriodicalId":273630,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Costume & Performance","volume":"73 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126418213","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"La Robe à la Française et la Robe l’Odalisque: Wearing women’s clothing in The Rose of Versailles","authors":"Emerald L. King","doi":"10.1386/scp_00034_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scp_00034_1","url":null,"abstract":"The androgynous heroine of Ikeda Ryoko’s manga The Rose of Versailles (1972‐73), Oscar Françoise de Jarjayes, is usually depicted in masculine, specifically military, attire. The sixth daughter of an important military colonel during the reign of Louis XV\u0000 and Louis XVI, Oscar is raised as a son and follows her father into the military. Oscar is only ever depicted in one dress, known as the robe l’odalisque ‐ a gown that is adopted at a pivotal moment of character development. It is while wearing this dress, which Ikeda intended\u0000 to serve as a wedding dress, that Oscar comes to terms with her unrequited love for Marie Antoinette’s lover, Count Axel von Fersen. In doing so, Oscar places more importance on her allegiance to France than to romance. This article investigates the complicated gender and social politics\u0000 that are symbolized by the choice to wear women’s clothing in The Rose of Versailles.","PeriodicalId":273630,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Costume & Performance","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132761822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dream weaving: A conversation with Jennifer Irwin","authors":"Margot Anderson","doi":"10.1386/scp_00036_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scp_00036_1","url":null,"abstract":"In December 2019 as I made my way through Bangarra Dance Theatre’s exhibition Knowledge Ground, Australia was in the early stages of a devastating bushfire season and Sydney was shrouded in a cloud of smoke. It was Bangarra Dance Theatre’s 30th anniversary and I was fully\u0000 immersed in a theatrical display of set pieces, soundscapes and costumes from landmark productions by Australia’s premier First Nations performing arts company. Bangarra’s body of work draws on over 65,000 years of Indigenous culture and fuses the language of traditional and contemporary\u0000 dance to create a compelling narrative based on a shared knowledge of country. These works have served as markers of revelation in the development of my own understanding of Australia and have made Bangarra an internationally acclaimed source of powerful story telling. They have also fuelled\u0000 a long-lasting appreciation of the costumes designed for the company by Jennifer Irwin with whom I shared a series of discussions.","PeriodicalId":273630,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Costume & Performance","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129390343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Organic entities, costume, human body and neo-liberalism","authors":"Tine Kolenik","doi":"10.1386/scp_00038_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scp_00038_1","url":null,"abstract":"This visual essay presents four of the author’s artistic projects, which respond to prevailing eastern European neo-liberal conceptions of the human body and the subjects it produces. The first project is concerned with the use of human skin as an organic material donated by its\u0000 ‘owner’ for the manufacture of a corset and belt, which become parts of a new costume. The second project explores the characteristic of the ‘ideal’ neo-liberal human subject by means of the costume produced by manipulating the author’s own blood. The third project\u0000 highlights the cultural norm according to which one is expected to present oneself to the known and especially unknown others in line with the dominant standards of feminine beauty ‐ erotically attractive, healthy, youthful and slim. The fourth project focuses on the almost obsessive\u0000 endeavour to preserve or rather achieve ‘the perfect skin’, as evident in countless beauty advertisements and artificially ‘optimized’ selfies.","PeriodicalId":273630,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Costume & Performance","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116085934","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: In search of national representation in the image of folklore","authors":"Alexandra Ovtchinnikova","doi":"10.1386/scp_00035_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scp_00035_1","url":null,"abstract":"In this case study analysis of the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) directed by Sergei Parajanov (1924‐90) I will explore the ways in which traditional dress in this film, as part of a wider imagery of folklore, has been defamiliarized from the ideological canon\u0000 of social realism. More specifically, I will look at the ways Parajanov’s film, filled with music, dance, colour and ethnographic texture, significantly departed from the traditional representation of non-Russians on the Soviet screen under the Friendship of Peoples policy. Based\u0000 on a folkloric legend, adapted and published in 1911 by Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi (1864‐1913), Shadows celebrates the ethnographic texture of the Hutsul region by departing significantly from causality and narrative logic and bringing together primitive and modern elements instead.\u0000 Praised for its authenticity, the film became a turning point in the search for a new site of national expression for Ukrainian filmmakers and more specifically, the role of folklore in its visual presentation. The work of the costume designer Lidiya Bajkova (1905‐80) is emblematic\u0000 in the way it renders authenticity beyond historical, ethnic and material accuracy by seamlessly integrating the costumes into the visual texture of the cinematic image. Her approach demonstrates how motifs and patterns that have previously been delegated to domesticated and melodramatic narratives\u0000 could conversely become a fundamental substance of the cinematic experience.","PeriodicalId":273630,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Costume & Performance","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116858618","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Innovative Costume of the 21st Century: The Next Generation, Dmitry Rodionov, curated by A.A. Bakhrushin Museum","authors":"Julieta Lynch","doi":"10.1386/scp_00040_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scp_00040_5","url":null,"abstract":"Innovative Costume of the 21st Century: The Next Generation, Dmitry Rodionov, curated by A.A. Bakhrushin MuseumState Historical Museum, A.A. Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, Center for Contemporary Art MARS Moscow, Russia, 17 June‐2 October 2019","PeriodicalId":273630,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Costume & Performance","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114296899","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}