Costume Performance: A Bodily Perception of Materials

COSTUME • MOVEMENT • PERFORMANCE •MATERIALS

Are you interested in understanding more deeply how a costume can generate a performance through the body engagement of peculiar materials? This is a workshop for the curious, the scenic arts practitioners, for bodies who love a new movement proposition intertwined with material handling, for anyone who wishes to understand a more contemporary aproach to costume, one that does not make it dependant on a story to be told, but rather suggests a story of its own and how the body wearing it is to tell such a narrative.

Practical Information

  • 3 classes of 2 hours each, spaced out within 3 conscutive weeks

  • date 1, date 2, date 3.

  • To be set in Paraguai Project, the studio space I share with other beautiful creative women, situated in Sant Martí: C/ Paraguai, 14 2nd Floor (ring me when arriving).

  • Classes start at 5 pm and should finish at 7, maximum 7:15.

Classes’ Content

FIRST CLASS: What exactly is costume performance?

In this first contact between us I will establish what Costume Performance is with a presentation that also contains references of untimely creatives who work in analog ways to my Bodily Garment Approach (Lucy McRae, Morena Cardoso, Lygia Clark, Marina Abramovic, Ruth Carter, and others).

After due introductions are made to the costume performance environment and some of my main inspirational artists’ work within it we will follow to engage in a body dynamic where the participant’s bodies are to establish their first sensorial contact with the materials I will offer as a medium for the costume experimentation to take place in the next two classes.

Lastly, we’ll finish off the class with some exercices that will help the materials to be worked upon and their numberly possibilities to stay put in the patticipants’ subscious minds.

Second Class: how to engage with materials in order to create a costume storytelling?

We are to start off this class straight with the materials. After a first wuick dynamic I will propose to movement engaging those materials, the plan is to leavesome time for sharings of any ideas the participants’ have had thorugout the week about how each material could possibly be turned into a scenic garment.

Before establishing the character each person is to create costumes thinking of, some sketching is to be done, with a more abstract approach to the materials themselves uniquely after the few bodily contacts had with them.

The next step will be for me to read a card from any of my female character/animal/ Deities decks for each participant, finally introducing to them which character their costumes will be visually and texturally describing.

Once each character is assigned to the participant and they aready have that first quick material-informed sketch, we are to take time to explore silhouettes, shapes, textures, material combinations and photograph such expetiments, also draw them out.

These images are the base for the third class, and the only thing participants are to carry home with them for the week that will keep them conected with our creation process.

third class: creating and sharing a capsule costume performance

This class is focused on making a whipped up experimental costume, based on which we are to explore movement, each in their individual small project based on their material interests and their character informed in class 2.

Having generated a capsule costume-material-movement suggestion, all participants are to finsih off this last class with a few minutes’ showcase of their experimentation over the 3 classes, both process-wise and the costume perfomance resulting.

Materials required:

  • Paper/ SketchBook

  • Camera (very welcome to be your phone one)

  • Colouring Materials

  • Sewing Tools

Materials offered:

  • Various Plastics

  • Various Large Papers

  • Various Fabric Cutouts

  • Various Haberdashery items

  • Various Wools and threads

  • Masking Tape

  • Mini Mannequins (one per person)

The cost of this workshop is 90€ and the minimum number of participants is 3 members. Payments are accepted via cash, bank transfer and Bizum.