Insubordinate Costume: Inspiring Performance presents a comprehensive study of historical and contemporary examples of scenographic costume – the type of costume that creates an almost complete stage environment by itself, simultaneously acting as costume, set and performance.
This book provides readers with an overview of the costumes, designers, context and theory that have contributed to the emerging field of ‘costume as performance’. Focusing on artists and their creative approach to space, form, materials and movement, the book looks at iconic figures such as Loïe Fuller, Oskar Schlemmer and Leigh Bowery, amongst contemporary examples of practitioners that are blurring disciplinary boundaries between fashion, dance, performance and theatre. The book includes chapters by Dr Sofia Pantouvaki, who focuses on performance costume as a means of research; Christina Lindgren, who presents the findings of the four-year Costume Agency project at Oslo National Academy of the Arts in Norway; Charlotte Østergaard, who discusses the implications of 'Listening with costume' and Felix Choong, writing on 'Contemporary Runways, Contemporary Costumes'. The final part of the volume, 'The Practitioners’ Voice', examines current practice through interviews and contributions from key practitioners with an afterword by Dr Rachel Hann.
Insubordinate Costume will appeal to professional costume designers, performance artists, dancers, directors, choreographers, fashion designers and theorists, teachers and students of these subjects. With its interdisciplinary focus and unique and dynamic content, this publication is relevant to a range of art, design and performance courses.
Part 1: Insubordinate Beginnings
1. Insubordinate Beginnings
Susan Marshall
2. Dance, Performance Art and Insubordinate Costume
Susan Marshall
Part 2: Blurring the boundaries between theatre, dance, performance art and fashion
3. Blurring the boundaries between theatre, dance, performance art and fashion
Susan Marshall
4. Contemporary Runways, Contemporary Costumes
Felix Choong
Part 3: The insubordinate here and now
5. The insubordinate here and now
Susan Marshall
6. On creating costume generated performances
Christina Lindgren
7. Listening with costume – a material-discursive practice
Charlotte Østergaard
8. Researching with and through Costume: Proposition for a Research Framework
Sofia Pantouvaki
Part 4: The practitioners’ voice
9. The practitioners’ voice – edited interviews and contributions
Susan Marshall et al
Afterword. Can bad costumes do good things?
Rachel Hann
Biography
Susan Marshall is a costume designer, adjunct professor of Twentieth Century Fashion at FIT in Milan, Politecnico di Milano and lecturer in costume design at AFOL Moda Milan. Insubordinate Costume is based on her doctoral research at Goldsmiths University of London, which explored the pivotal role of costume in performance and the fundamental importance of play in the performers’ creative approach to the costumes.
