Category: Costuming

The Final Felting

I’ve been working on a fun and inspiring costuming gig for the past few weeks. You can check out earlier parts of the project here and here. Above are the super charming Peacock Clips that will clip on the front of emerald bodysuit/tutu combos. They’ll be accompanied by the headbands below:

I am in love with the Peacock pieces. Who doesn’t love the rich and unexpected colour combos in a Peacock feather — and it works so well in felt.

Next, Goldfish! They are brooches that will sit at the turquoise hips of each wee dancer. And note the awesome cutting mat and Olfa rotary, dang I’m loving them!

Followed by little tuxedo-inspired bibs that go with top hats and gloves for a tap dance number. I wasn’t sure I liked my idea on this one and then in reality, it’s a contender for favourite, I think it’s totally charming! Could be great in cotton as a baby bib, hmmmm …

Here’s a work in progress shot of the pieces for the elegant grey and cream flowers for the Flower Waltz dance. They will sit against plum coloured suits:

And the finished products. My first “S-fold” flowers were very satisfying to make. I appreciated the fickle pickle’s tutorial. I ended up hand stitching my flowers rather than gluing them and used felt circles rather than buttons in the middle, but she unravelled the mystery for me and got me rolling — and that’s why I love crafty bloggers. Three cheers for sharing!

And lastly, most sweetly, I leave you with a bowl of candy. Felt candies. But don’t them look delectable? I caught Rudi licking them, riiiiiight. They ended up being strung along ribbons and hung shoulder to shoulder and shoulder to hip on little dancers in royal blue. And then one pink and one blue candy each on barrettes in their hair. My teeth are aching from the sweetness.

Thanks to Kitty Ballistic for the joyful, colourful idea and for the tutorial. I see more of these in my decorating future …

More Felt: pinwheeling, flapping, waltzing

I am buried in the costuming job that I mentioned last post. I’m having so much fun! Miles of thread have been wound and stitched and the cuteness continues to reveal itself. Here are some of the finished pieces so far.

Felt pinwheels, one for each shoulder against a red tutu, how cute will that be?!
The Pizzicato Polka dancers get geometric headbands with their pinwheel brooches. This headband is one of my new favourite things to make, so easy. So hip! I kind of want an adult sized one.
Little Flapper headbands — they’ll have black pearl necklaces tied in a knot and big felt flowers at their hip too. My teeth hurt from thinking about the cuteness!
Petal headbands for wee flower-waltz dancers.
Felt crowns for the Aquarium dance — they go with a turquoise bodysuit and tutu, then a palm-sized goldfish will pin on the hip. I think turquoise and orange is one of my favourite colour combos ever! Almost finished, just gotta hand stitch the bottoms closed. Better get back to it …

Rearview Fridays: Knitted Organs

Today I think it’s time to share another knitting project for Rearview Fridays, 3 dimensional internal organs! I made them as costume pieces for a dance I choreographed last year called Organ Stories. The story of the dance itself will be  one for another Rearview Friday, I have to upload some video and want to give the dance it’s due here. And these organs deserve their stand-alone own entry.

This first shot is of The Uterus, with me and dancer Krista Posyniak getting organised for a rehearsal in June 2011. I was super-duper pregnant with Gene!

Inspiration: The Heart

In 2009 I knitted an anatomical heart for my husband for Valentine’s day, which he thought was weird, but I also like to think he secretly loves that I do such things! I sought out a pattern online since I didn’t really know where to start and was amazed at all the anatomical patterns people had come up with. Here’s the heart pattern I used, it’s by Kristin Ledgett of The Knit Cafe in Toronto.

I also knitted a heart that year for a wee boy named Ford, my friend’s son who was in hospital with complications from Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. Sometimes when I’m at a loss when those I cherish are in a hard spot, making something is the only way I can think of to show my deep love. I pour my thoughts and goodness and hope into my hours of work, and I hope, I believe, that the object carries the weight of that love. Ford is no longer alive, but I’m glad my knitted heart sat beside him and his mom, who is so dear to me, for a while. So this piece is especially tender for me.

The Lungs

I chose 4 organs that I’d make short solos about. The dancer spoke about facts and emotional associations of each organ and then danced a little organ-specific solo — like a lecture-demo on physiology through dance!

Here are the lungs, they tie around the neck and have super-strong earth magnets on the back that stick to a blouse with magnets sewn into it. I developed my own pattern from a few different ones I looked at online, but I didn’t write it down since I modified as I went, argh! Ah well, there’s next time.

The Uterus

This one made me giggle as I made it. And it was great when people would ask me what I was making, particularly because I was obviously pregnant while I was knitting! It was a highly appropriate organ to be knitting in my condition. I worked directly from a lovely, easy to follow pattern on Knitty by MK Carroll. I’ve also made this as a gift for my midwives, the lovely ladies that saw my boys into the world. Best midwife or obstetrician gift ever!

The Brain

The Brain I concocted myself. I used a great little Blue Whoville Hat Pattern as a base, though I modified a lot of things, made it bigger, alternated knit and purl for the earflaps so that they’d be more smooth than the original and did away with the ribbed band in the original.

Then I made miles and miles and miles of i-cord that I sewed onto the hat like a brain. It was fun to tell people that I was knitting my brain, have them look at the looooooooog cord, scratch their heads and walk away wondering about my sanity … but my plan worked! Here it is:

And lastly, I leave you with a shot from the performance of Organ Stories in July 2011. Here’s the slightly frazzled Professor Posyniak with her spectacles on and her Judy covered in organs. You can see the magnets sewn onto her blouse that the organs stick to for each solo. She was just finished lecturing about the brain and was about to dance it, which as mentioned before I’ll share in video form on another day:

This photo by Andréa de Keijzer, the dancer is Krista Posyniak.

Happy Friday everyone, hope that you’ll never look at your organs the same now that you’ve made it through this post …

Rearview Friday: Costume Dolls

I was talking about dolls with a friend last night and my mind wandered in it’s dusty reaches to recall some of the dolls I’ve made in the past. I think it’s time to share these little ladies for today’s Rearview Friday!

I made them, wee versions of us, as a gift for my co-choreographer Lindsay Zier-Vogel on the premiere of our dance work Edith and Eliza in the spring of 2006. The dolls are based on Waldorf dolls (that’s right I was a Waldorf kid! And I have a deep sentimental fondness for these little dolls with the simple faces). If you want to know more about Waldorf dolls, I found a lovely how-to here by Amber Dusick, who also happens to be the brilliant lady behind Parenting. Illustrated with Crappy Pictures. I am a big fan. You probably should be too.

Anyhoooo, back to the dolls: in addition to sort of looking like Lindsay and me, the dolls are dressed in tiny versions of costumes from 2 of our collaborative dance projects, seen in full size and context below. As you can see they each have an envelope. This is because part of our creative process for Edith and Eliza was to actually write and post letters to each other as “Edith” and “Eliza”, fictitious war brides we created to develop a story behind the dance. Some of the text from these letters was woven into the soundscore as a narration. Each letter snaps onto the dolls hand and actually has a wee letter in it. Because I am awesome. And obviously humble. But seriously, it was a really fulfilling creative process. The the doll making was a cherry-on-top project in the fun department.

The dances that the doll’s costumes were made to honour:

Susanne Chui and Jennifer Dallas in Whistling Matilda, a dance film by Rhys Brisbin, Susan Kendal and Lindsay Zier-Vogel, 2004. Photo: Linsday Zier-Vogel.
Susan Kendal in Edith and Eliza by Susan Kendal and Lindsay Zier-Vogel, 2006. Photo: Ted Zier-Vogel.

And lastly, our lovely selves with the dollies. Just before we went into the theatre for the premiere. Edith and Eliza and the costume dolls were the last major dance and crafty-sewing projects I worked on before becoming pregnant and a mommy. Feels like a lifetime ago, but not in a bad way. Just a “huh” way. Life was so utterly different then!

Susan Kendal and Lindsay Zier-Vogel outside the Winchester Street Theatre, Toronto. Showing off the costume dolls just before the premiere of our work Edith and Eliza, part of the Series 8:08 Season Finale, May 2006. Photo: Andrea Roberts.

Cheers to art, all kinds of it, making our lives so full. Happy Friday folks.

Dancing Semaphore

A late afternoon session at my sewing machine, buried in piles of netting, finishing the costume for my current dance project Semaphore:

I’m excited to be presenting this new wee solo Semaphore tonight and tomorrow, at a coffee house presentation put on by students of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre (my Alma mater). I’m friends with Megumi Kokuba, one of the current graduating students there, and we decided it would be fun to work on something together for her last student coffee house. We settled on Semaphore Flag systems — in both English and Japanese — as an inspiration point.We choreographed together, Megumi is performing and I’ve made the costume and set, comprised of giant paper airplanes (it was fun learning how to fold them online. I was never a big on making paper airplanes as a kid, so I had to look ’em up, now I’m hooked).

Megumi models the costume in studio B (I have spent many hours of my life in this room, taking class, rehearsing, teaching class, choreographing, sigh):

The work literally uses Semaphore Flag positions to spell out the words “remember” and “solitaire” in English and Japanese. We created choreography using the flag symbols as a starting point, tracing their lines through the space. We also walked the points used in semaphore flagging across the floor. Megumi and I worked fast (we spent just 3 hours in the studio together, yikes!) due to mad schedules for both of us and I’m really pleased with the result. The music we used is by Buck 65, a fantastic Canadian artist. Both his music and lyrics in the song Paper Airplane speak to me of longing and reaching across space and time. A beautiful, lilting song, it felt like the right fit for this dance.

Check out a 3 minute clip of Semaphore I’ve compiled on vimeo. It was filmed during the tech run, first time under lights and with the “living set” of 3 dancers that walk with paper airplanes across the space and around the dancer throughout the work.

Rudi and Gene (3 1/2 years and 6 months respectively) both came to some of our rehearsals and also sat through the technical and dress rehearsals — they are superstars with focus and patience that belie their years and months. They actually enjoyed sitting in the dark theatre (for the most part, Rudi was a bit freaked by the super-dark between dances and the cheering from the fellow performers attending rehearsal) and watching the magic unfold under the theatrical lighting. Rudi’s quiet little wonderings were so charming, “Where’s the music?” (a legit question, oh contemporary dance in silence!), and “I see ghost shadows!” (oh massive shadows thrown by theatre lights!). As a mom it’s so rewarding to still be able to practice my craft and involve my wee kids in what I do. I love that they won’t remember the first time they attended a theatre event, it’s just part of their lives.

Well, as we say in dance before the show, merde (instead of break a leg, that’s for the theatre folk) and may your weekend be gorgeous.

—

Click here for details on the show Coffee House: Dark Roast.

Rearview Fridays: Dresses for Cedar Stories

In August of 2001 I had my first professional gig as a dancer. Freshly minted from The School of Toronto Dance Theatre’s Professional Training Program, I felt a 50/50 mix of apprehension/excitement about life in dance. The choreographer and employer was my dear friend and regular collaborator (to this day!) Lindsay Zier-Vogel. [ASIDE: you should check her out, her writing and crafting and sheer verve are intoxicating. I’m sure she’ll come up on this blog often! Her Love Letter Project is particularly awesome.] The piece was called Cedar Stories.

I costumed Cedar Stories, resulting in some of my favourite original costume work to date. Lindsay actually still wears one of the dresses around socially!

We found some fantastic fabric that stretched in all directions but was somehow not spandexy. It was dark green on one side and light on the underside, which was fun design-wise. I measured and drew and patterned up a storm. And the costume-faeries were with me because they worked like a charm, timeless.

Cedar Stories was performed in fFIDA (aka the now defunct Fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists). I shared the stage with 2 fellow students from The School of TDT, Jennifer-Lynn Crawford and Kate Holden (centre and left respectively in the above shot) — both women who have gone onto active, inspiring careers as dance artists. The music was live, a cellist named Rachel McBride. Her skills were remarkable and haunting, it was magic working in studio and on stage with her.

Lindsay and I got to know each other at The School of TDT. I actually remember her choreography at a student coffee house before I really remember her. It may or may not have been to Ani DiFranco!  She’s got a rare choreographic sensibility. I still remember running backwards in a big arc in this work, feeling rather kamikaze, imagery — such as a hand gesture mimicking the way Chestnut leaves fold down. A pair of my Fluevog shoes also featured in Cedar Stories, I think I had to toss one behind my back, and I may or may not have clocked another dancer at some point *ahem*.

I’m not sure if there is video footage of Cedar Stories available, 2001 being the dark ages before little digital gadgets with more memory than I can conceive of were readily available. I don’t even think we have photos from the actual performance. But I do have these backstage pics. And great memories.

Oh, 2001 was also the summer I met and fell in love with a boy named Adam. Now I’m married to him. Still in love, actually way more than I was at first blush. ‘Twas a good summer!