Italy’s Riccardo Tisci designs costumes for Abramovic’s Bolero

 ballet, costume design  No Responses »
May 032013
 

Ricc 388x500 Italys Riccardo Tisci designs costumes for Abramovics BoleroItalian designer Ric­cardo Tisci, a gradu­ate from London’s Cent­ral Saint Mar­tins Academy, has been Givenchy’s Cre­at­ive Dir­ector for the last eight years. His first bal­let cos­tumes were seen last night in Mar­ina Abramovic’s take on Boléro. Bel­gian cho­reo­graph­ers Sidi Larbi Cherka­oui and Damien Jalet were respons­ible for the dance, but it was Abramovic’s concept, and set design. This com­ing together was organ­ised by the Opera Bal­let as part of a mul­tiple pro­gramme, and fea­tures top dan­cers Aurélie Dupont and Marie-Agnès Gillot.

Abramovic cre­ated an all-black sceno­graphy, with a sus­pen­ded mir­ror panel to duplic­ate the 11 dan­cers, provid­ing an excel­lent frame for Tisci’s costumes.

It is one of the dreams of a designer to design cos­tumes for a bal­let. I have had offers in the past from many other big theaters/operas.… [con­tinue reading]

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Sylvano Bussotti: flamboyant composer, poet, set and costume designer, theatre director, and… and… and…

 ballet, costume design, opera, set design  No Responses »
Dec 272012
 

Sil­vano Bus­sotti, known as Sylvano, is an Italian eccent­ric, some say genius, and the word ‘flam­boy­ant’ appears in many art­icles about this mod­ern Renais­sance man. He is a com­poser, poet, set and cos­tume designer, painter, journ­al­ist, actor, singer, theatre and film dir­ector and some­time bad boy of the arts. Inter­na­tion­ally he is more known as a com­poser, and the Oxford Grove Music Encyc­lo­pae­dia describes his music thus:

His music at once exults in and cri­ti­cizes the dec­ad­ence of mod­ern­ism: his nota­tion is often flam­boy­antly vir­tu­oso in its graphic style and fiercely demand­ing to per­form; his works tend to abound in cross-references, to each other and to his per­sonal life, which would seem col­our­ful; he mixes a sen­su­ous­ness amount­ing to erot­i­cism with an extreme arti­fi­ci­al­ity.… [con­tinue reading]

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Maria Callas’ costume for Macbeth at La Scala in 1952 in photos

 costume design, opera  No Responses »
Dec 162012
 

PB270057 700x464 Maria Callas costume for Macbeth at La Scala in 1952 in photosMaria Cal­las’ cos­tumes evoke a spe­cial fris­son of excite­ment: know­ing that she was wear­ing it when she sang a role so loved from a record­ing, and, for a few, hav­ing actu­ally seen her 60 years ago in the theatre dressed in the same cos­tume now sit­ting on a mannequin.

’s pre­serves these cos­tumes, and those of many other legendary opera sing­ers, with lov­ing care. There is no per­man­ent exhib­i­tion of cos­tumes at the theatre or its museum, some­thing which should be redressed (pun intended).

Here are some phở­tos of the cos­tume designed for Cal­las’ Lady Macbeth by Nic­ola Benois in 1952.… [con­tinue reading]

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Boris Bilinsky: costume and set designer for ballet, opera and film and legendary graphic artist

 costume design, set design  1 Response »
Dec 062012
 

Bilinsky Casanova Boris Bilinsky: costume and set designer for ballet, opera and film and legendary graphic artistBoris Bil­in­sky was born in Odessa in 1900, but left Rus­sia in 1920, escap­ing from the after­math of the Revolu­tion. He settled in Ber­lin where he was still able to col­lab­or­ate with Rus­sian theatres, but in 1923 he moved to Paris and worked with the Stu­dio Albatros, a pro­duc­tion com­pany in Montreuil. Albatros had only been set up in 1922, but was soon to pro­duce some of the most import­ant mas­ter­pieces of early cinema, includ­ing Abel Gance’s mam­moth Napoléon in 1927.

Dur­ing this period Bil­in­sky designed numer­ous cos­tumes for French cinema such as Jean Epstein’s Le lion de Mogols and a series of exquis­ite designs for Alex­an­der Volkoff’s film Cas­anova.

For ten years Bil­in­sky pro­duced designs for two or three films a year.… [con­tinue reading]

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Kinder Aggugini designs ballet costumes for MacMillan’s The Rite of Spring

 ballet, costume design  No Responses »
Jan 032012
 

Kinder Aggugini ENB Kinder Aggugini designs ballet costumes for MacMillans The Rite of SpringBrit­ish reports that Kinder Aggu­gini is team­ing up with the Eng­lish National Bal­let to redesign the cos­tumes for ’s The , dur­ing the Bey­ond Bal­lets Russes sea­son at the Lon­don Coli­seum in March 2012.

Kinder is an intriguing char­ac­ter. An Italian Ex-punk, he stud­ied at St. Mar­tins dur­ing the 1980′s and worked on Savile row before mov­ing to John Gal­li­ano (where he applied for the job dressed as a police­man). He also worked at Vivi­enne West­wood, Paul Smith, Calvin Klein, Cos­tume National and as a head designer for Ver­sace fol­low­ing the death of Gianni. He told Vogue,

I was thrilled to be given the oppor­tun­ity to redesign MacMillan’s bal­let. The guidelines for bal­let cos­tumes are quite strict, so on top of an appear­ance one has to con­sider func­tion­al­ity and durability.”

After hav­ing cre­ated a one-off tutu for the Eng­lish National Ballet’s company’s fun­drais­ing sum­mer party in July last year, he was approached by the company’s artistic dir­ector to meet MacMillan’s widow to dis­cuss The Rite of Spring redesign.… [con­tinue reading]

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Christian Lacroix’s La Source costumes are as tacky as disco

 ballet, costume design  1 Response »
Nov 102011
 

Get­ting to know a critic’s taste is import­ant to get the most out of a review. I can be con­vinced to go and see some­thing by a neg­at­ive review because I know what the writer goes for. I was there­fore sur­prised when The Times’ detested the look of the Ballet’s La Source. I loved it.

La Source Christian Lacroixs La Source costumes are as tacky as disco

Sump­tu­ous cos­tumes by Chris­tian Lacroix, which recall Franca Squarciapino’s bold col­our choices for the company’s pro­duc­tion of La Bay­adère, set off against a simple set made up from theatre ele­ments such as ropes and and vel­vet cur­tains: a time­less the­at­rical space which shows off the cos­tumes won­der­fully. Craine writes,

… you have to close your eyes to the ballet’s hideous mod­ern sets, one for each act.… [con­tinue reading]

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