Glacial Decoy

Like play and symphony, the movement of the dancers was symbolic of an exposition reaching crescendo from the solos to the group dances. The jumpsuit was designed in sheer layers to add shade and lighting to the performance.

Context: Dancers move back and forth like a pendulum across the rear of the stage, pulling in more dancers from the wings, then dropping others back off. It’s as if there were a chain of dancers encircling the scene, and we were seeing just a tiny segment of it.

In collaboration with Eugene Lang College, I was among a select few students who got the opportunity to design costumes and garments for their Spring Production performed at New York Live Arts. Jumpsuits needed to be monochromatic and in tones of grey inspired by Brown’s fluid and dynamic movements. With the complexity of the performance, costumes needed to be conscious of the body, space and movement. Dancers, swing their arms, unfurling their limbs like ribbons strewn by a fan while skipping around the stage.

Garments were designed based on the choreography and concept of the performance, creating layered, sculptural and loose jumpsuits in knit fabric to allow ease in movement. As the dancers portrayed glacial beings, pieces were to seem mysterious add to the story. I collaborated with my peer’ Meng Sun, to create iterations and toiles to achieve the costume.

Without the music, costumes played an important addition to the production with each component rendered in the shifting tonality in gray-scale, enhancing Brown's theme of visual deflection. We created garments experimenting with layers and shades to visually communicate Designed loose, moonstone-gray pajamalike costumes with fluid moves bringing echoes of the "misshapen pearl"—the meaning of "Baroque."

The Trisha Brown Restaging Project was restaged by Iréne Hultman and choreographed Brown’s landmark 1979 work, “Glacial Decoy”

Process Book below

Conceptual + Pattern Making + Fashion + Theater