Studies in Costume & Performance - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2019

This article examines two women who performed athletic feats at the New York Hippodrome between 1905 and 1917, arguing that their approaches to costume and bodily display were integral to their widespread critical and public acclaim. The women examined are lion tamer Claire Heliot and swimmer and diver Annette Kellerman. I contend that these performers occupied a difficult position within the early-twentieth-century entertainment industry. The type of mainstream spectacle that the Hippodrome provided, combined with strict societal ideas of what constituted femininity and masculinity, created an environment that was not conducive to the success of athletic women.

Their unusual acts therefore required them to negotiate their public image in such a way that emphasized their inherent femininity. Their costume was an essential element of this negotiation as it exposed the audience to a kind of woman with whom they were already familiar. Claire Heliot did this by occupying a traditional domestic womanhood that sharply contrasted with her dangerous lion-taming act, and Annette Kellerman emphasized her beauty through the sexually charged display of her body in form-fitting costumes and swimsuits. In addition to analyses of their costumes, critical responses to their performances are taken into consideration as evidence of these women’s success as performers. This article highlights how costume and the body can be used as tools to alter identity and reinforce gender norms for the purposes of subverting the physical expectations of women.

This visual essay will introduce Brave New Worlds’ costume-led devising process in the creative evolution of their production, Trinity. Brave New Worlds is a collaboration between movement specialist and director Valentina Ceschi, and artists and scenographers Guoda Jaruseviciute and myself, Kate Lane. Their work centres on the body as scenographer and on collective authorship of design and direction and examines the following research questions: How can a costume direct the body’s movement and this movement direct the design development? How do you create a dramaturgy from the scenography, invoking concept and narrative? If body scenography is the central focus for the performance, how do other design aspects collaborate to create a complete scenographic experience? This visual essay will present the working methodology of a visual dramaturgy, examining the use of the body as the instigator in the scenography, the dialogue between the costume and the performer, and between the designer/performer as subject, author and object of the design. It will explore the stages of production, and creative processes involved, from initial research on concept through design development to the implications of site-specific locations on the scenography and final dramaturgy. In the process, it places costume as author and dramaturg.

This article presents a method for costume design, where empathy and embodiment are used as methodological choices by the designer in the character-creation process. In creating references for the sketching process, costume designers combine photos in which they portray themselves as the character that they imagine. These role-selfies, taken with a handheld tablet, work as starting points for the sketching procedure. The material for the present study is collected from MA costume design students who participated in digital character-creation courses at Aalto University, in Helsinki, Finland, and is a part of doctoral research by the author. The data are collected through a mixed-method approach and is organized as a case study investigating the experiences of using the body as a source for costume design. The research question in this study is as follows: does an awareness of one’s own body facilitate the sketching process? The initial results show that the research participants consider the method useful because it enables them to experience a stronger bodily connection with the digital medium, the imagined design and the emerging character in the costume sketching process. Hence, the findings of this study can be used to develop design and teaching practices not only in the field of costume design but also in other design processes involving character creation.

This research report seeks to record and reflect on the process of creating costumes for Jasmin Vardimon’s dance theatre work Maze (2015). It examines this experience within the context of an evolving methodology, established at a point of reflection on a twenty-year practice of designing costumes in contemporary dance. Drawing on a background of Laban-centred dance training, the design approach is rooted in a physical understanding; the bodily experience of what it is to dance. This includes an understanding of kinaesthetic empathy, how it was harnessed and subsequently informed the creation of the costumes for two distinct groups of performers. Maze, unlike all previous Vardimon productions, is an ‘immersive’ work. This specific scenographic context had an impact on the collaborative relationship, which led to new thinking in defining a creative relationship with choreography. The intertwining of costume and choreography as visual language is continued with the search for written language that adequately describes the creative processes and relationships, drawing on Vardimon’s own arts practice.