I’m finally foraying into dance again, which has been fun, designing 2 pieces for Clairobscur Dance Company, who will show on November 5th at Dance Arc in Pasadena.
It’s been an interesting process for me, and had me designing in a very different way. The pieces I’ve designed are not period or character driven, and although they do reference the material the artistic director, Laurie Sefton, has created from, there has been a lot of freedom to create something fresh and different, particular in the second piece.
The first piece Oblivion Soames, is based on the world of medicine. Going through the motions of operations, shuffling in and out of hospitals, the vulnerability and sense of self-protection one must have to get oneself through it all. For this piece I created silk chiffon medical gowns (the nicest you’ve ever seen 
) that flow softly with the performers and show their bodies (all bias cut… yes, a nightmare, but so worth it). They are open in the back, and also incredibly sheer, showing the vulnerability of the patients. I was watching the film Never Let Me Go, as I created them, which seemed like an uncannily good choice, watching children created to be organ donors go through endless cold procedures.
The second piece, (which I have to say I’m most excited about) I had no real brief for. It’s a dance created around a piece of music that was written about the I5; the composer was shuttling back and forth along the road commuting for months and wrote the piece to celebrate the I5- particularly the drive between LA and SF. As someone who has taken that road way too often, (my parents are in SF) but is now so sick of it I always take the 101, it was nice to go back to that road to create this piece.
After researching travelers, traveling clothing, deconstructed clothing, and sculptural shapes (looking at Vivianne Westwood, Hussain Chalayan, and an amazing book by the V&A called Radical Fashion), sitting down with Laurie, we realized that none of the shapes I had chosen would accentuate the body, something she was really set on.
So I went back to the drawing board, empty handed. The only thing we agreed on was colour- the dusty yellows, that look like they are smudged pastels, the seared burnt umbers, the washed out baby blues, the saged greens, and patches of brown- no really flowers, but just dried grass and fields for miles. So I decided to create just that.
I took images from along the road- the grapevine, pictures of hay being burnt, the windmills around Tracy, the flats just after the grapevine, the single ant trail of cars as far as your eye can see, turned all those images on their side, and then collaged them all out of fabric. Easier said than done…
which is why I took some pictures of my process
Uncertain Terrain will be performed at 8.30pm on the 5th and 7.30pm on the 6th of November at Dance Arc in Pasadena, 1158 East Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, California 91106.
For more from Clairobscur’s official site see here
