Couture Creations for Dancing Bodies
An exhibition at the Centre National du Costume de Scène in France considers the dialogue between the stage and the runway.
By
Roslyn Sulcas
Jan. 1, 2020
MOULINS, France — Soft jersey bathing suits, molded on the body, fitted pink cloche caps framing the face. These were Coco Chanel’s simple yet revolutionary designs for the Ballets Russes’s “Le Train Bleu” (1924), a dance about gilded youth at the seaside, doing calisthenics and playing tennis and golf.
Chanel was just one of a star-studded artistic team: The scenario was by Cocteau,
the front curtain by Picasso, the choreography by Bronislava Nijinska and the score by Darius Milhaud. But in choosing Chanel to design the costumes, Diaghilev, as so often, broke new ground.
“Chanel was the first couturier to create costumes for the stage,” said Philippe Noisette, the curator of “Couturiers de la Danse,” an exhibition that continues through May 3 at the Centre National du Costume de Scène, or National Theatrical Costume Museum, here in the Auvergne region of France. Sportswear, Mr. Noisette noted, was a relatively new category of clothing, and Chanel’s practical, stylish designs both surprised and inspired her audiences in this early crossover moment between ballet and fashion.
One of the bathing outfits from “Le Train Bleu” is on prominent display in “Couturiers de la Danse,” which traces couturier-choreographer collaborations from 1924 to the present. The exhibition is organized by theme: “Shapes,” “Second Skin,” “Not So Classical” and “Materials.”
Iris van Herpen, Rick Owens, Gareth Pugh and Hedi Slimane.
“I’m really interested in the dialogue you often see between stage and runway,” Mr. Noisette said. “The stage can be a kind of laboratory, a sketch pad, for the designer. You sometimes see inventions in costumes that show up in the collections the next year. And sometimes pieces are tested in runway shows and then appear onstage.” He quoted Chanel: “Fashion doesn’t only exist through the clothes; it’s in the air.”
But what looks good on a runway doesn’t necessarily translate directly to the stage. Dance costumes have to conform to the specific needs of the performers, choreography and theater, which even the most sophisticated couturier may have to learn.
“After you have designed a piece, you have to ask, can this be danced in?” said Harriet Jung, who
together with her design partner Reid Bartelme specializes in costumes for dance. “If there is a lot of partnering, if they slide on the ground a lot, or are lifted in the air a lot, you have to think about how the fabric will handle it, whether it will be comfortable, flexible and not get in the way or between the dancers.”
Sometimes you learn this the hard way, Ms. Jung said, describing a boned corset, created for the ballerina Julie Kent, that broke into pieces during a rehearsal. (And other times, the designer overrules mere notions of practicality; in some of Walter Van Beirendonck’s designs for the ballet “Sous Apparence,” the dancer “can hardly see out of the eyeholes,” Mr. Noisette said.)
You can learn the fundamentals of clothing construction through study, Mr. Bartelme wrote in an email. But understanding “the mechanics of dance costume is learned through trial and error, and from the shops and makers who have done it before.”
Couturiers who sustain creative relationships with choreographers get a chance to learn those mechanics. Beyond its four themes, the exhibition also has sections devoted to specific choreographer-designer collaborations:
Jean-Paul Gaultier and Régine Chopinot; Issey Miyake and William Forsythe; Gianni Versace and Maurice Béjart; and the eclectic design choices of the choreographer Daniel Larrieu.
The exhibition has a decidedly European focus, a choice that was made partly for practical reasons, Mr. Noisette said, though he regretted among other gaps not having any costumes created for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, especially the remarkable lumpy
Rei Kawakubo pieces for “Scenario.”
After a walk through the exhibition, Mr. Noisette talked about some of the costumes — what they reveal about fashion and innovation and how they speak of dance in its time. Here are edited excerpts from that conversation.
Charleston effect
On Aura Tout Vu was created for “L’Enfant et Les
Sortilèges” (2016), choreographed by Jeroen Verbruggen for the Monte Carlo Ballet. Jean-Christophe Maillot, the director of that company, has a history of commissioning fashion designers, including lesser-known ones. These designers, who are Bulgarian and Portuguese, “combine a whimsical eccentricity with a real couture finish and detailing,” Mr. Noisette said.
Marie-Agnès Gillot’s “Sous Apparence,” which she created in 2012 for the Paris Opera Ballet. Most of the dancers in the work wear more conventional attire (although, unconventionally, the men were on point); these pieces, Mr. Noisette said, were like interventions in the ballet, “blocks of color and geometric form which suddenly appeared.”
Like tutus, these costumes are made from tulle. But here the fabric is folded and pleated “so that it becomes a carapace,” Noisette said. This one is called the bee. Like the others it has a playful quality: one looks like a tree, another like a surfboard. It is “a bit of a challenge to the spectator,” Mr. Noisette said. “At first the costumes look like pure shape, but when you look at it close up, you see how detailed the work is.”
Silver fish
Benjamin Millepied’s “Clear, Loud, Bright, Forward,” created for the Paris Opera Ballet in 2015, Ms. van Herpen has kept the traditional shape of the costume, but taken away the many layers of tulle that usually make up the skirt; it’s almost an abstract idea of a tutu. “I think it changes the way you look at this traditional female ballet costume,” Mr. Noisette said. “The ballerina is less objectified, in a different space.”
Plastic cowboy
1990 Biennale de la Danse in Lyon, which had “America” as its theme, allowing Ms. Skinazi to riff on cowboy stereotypes with panache. She “likes a very colorful palette,” Mr. Noisette said. “This is obviously a homage to the cowboy tradition, but the trousers are made from PVC and false fur, while the jacket is leather and suede.” He pointed out that couture tends to use pure, expensive fabrics like wool, silk and linen, but Ms. Skinazi mixes in cheaper materials that create great visual impact. “It’s a very sophisticated piece, a kind of disguise, but also really fun.”
dance in her runway shows; this dress suggests that costumes are sometimes born from fashion as well as sometimes inspiring it. Here she uses a traditional style of Romantic-era ballet dress, which also refers to the Dior silhouettes of the late-’40s. Her Paris fashion-week show in September was inspired by Dior’s love of flowers, and here they are layered into the costume. Made out of muslin, they are sewn between layers of mousseline and tulle, both on the bodice and the skirt. “At the beginning, you don’t really see them; they gradually reveal themselves through the movement,” Mr. Noisette said. “There is something very romantic and touching about it.”
New York Times