Spin: costumes for cross-cultural dance performance

This research investigated practitioners and teachers of Kathak (Indian Dance), exploring creativity within traditional practice.

Both dance forms are constructed using virtuoso spin, which, in ballet is right-handed and in Kathak executed to the left. As Lead Costume Designer I researched, designed and produced six costumes, for Ballet and Kathak to enhance the neo-classic ‘fusion’ choreography; the Kathak costumes respected the traditional modesty of the dancers, and the inherent ballet idiom. The research investigated the response of cut and fabric to spin, in clockwise and anticlockwise directions. This original concept involved my attendance at rehearsals to video dancers and test fabrics and cutting styles in unprecedented manner informed by dance practice. The unique garment patterns were complex ‘golden mean’ spirals cut in tulle using bias fabric properties distributed around a stretch silk tunic attached in either, left or right-hand orientation.

The spin performance is staged in the round, with live musicians on a central dais, the audience faces outwards and dancers wheel around in alternately illuminated areas. Digital video, to which I contributed content, allows simultaneous projection of the dancers in kaleidoscopic effect, creating spinning and ‘ghost’ dancers in the performance space. Throughout the gestation of spin; I devised a ground-breaking method of simulating the spiral silhouettes, colour and fabric combinations in movement and lighting effects on computer in 2D and 3D using Poser 5 software and BVH animated (.swf) files. This efficient new working process allowed me to email results for team approval and considerably boosted the design, negotiation and decision cycle. I continue to hone this methodology.

Sue Jenkyn-Jones
Research Interests
Virtual bodies, avatars and garments, computer wearables, film, animation and fashion for dance, shopping technologies, CAD/CAM for knitwear.
Current Research
My research and practice fuses the development of new technologies in clothing manufacture and the virtual visualisation of fabric, fashion and accessories. Outcomes have included innovative fabrics, and virtual CAD/CAM output, wearables and animations, shown at the Banff, New Media Institute, Canada 2004, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York (CAD'Infinitum Jan. 2000) and the Design Museum Sweden, Mälmo, (Textiles, Techniques and Technologies) June 2001.I am interested in shopping technologies and applications for mobile and embedded technology for consumer interaction in retail and performance environments.
Between 2002 and 2004 I led a series of workshops and projects hosted by Central Saint Martins for an EU 1st project consortium co-ordinated by EURATEX called Fashion-Online, established to benchmark 2D sales aids and 3D body-scanning technologies and interfaces for fashion websites for both B2B and B2C. This work continues with a mass-customisation project SERVIVE, to begin 2008.
In 2002 I published a handbook for school leavers and aspiring fashion designers 'Fashion Design' now in its second edition (Laurence King Publishers ISBN 1-85669-245-0), and in 2008 will launch a visual guide to Digital Fashion.