Curating costume back to the centre of performance

This paper interrogates approaches to the curation of scenography that inevitably privilege the performance space over the body thus contributing to the lack of discourse around costume.

It compares this to the road travelled over the last decade by fashion curation, focusing in particular on exhibitions such as 'Addressing the Century', ' Specters' and the 'Art of Fashion' which have articulated the performative values of dress as art and thus influencing discourse on dress.

The intention is to engage the national curators into debate around the costume body, at the centre of the scenographic construct, and through this to scholarly and practice-based debates on performance practice.

At the two day-symposium Scenography Expanded in Amsterdam, which was hosted by Theaterschool Amsterdam and Peter de Kimpe, national curators and the PQ's creative team focused on an initial brainstorming event on regarding the curatorial concepts and artistic concerns for PQ 2011.

PQ curators, coordinators, and other professionals connected to the PQ who gave a presentation were: Sue Gallagher (New Zealand), Susan Tsu (USA), Meta Hocevar (Slovenia), Donatella Barbieri (UK), Reija Hirvikovski (Finland), Yukio Horio (Japan), Tali Itzaki (Israel), Catarina Fortuna (Portugal), Christina Lindgren (Norway), Andrea Kralova (CZ), Peter Farley (UK), Nino Gunia-Kuznetsova (Georgia), Sergio Villegas (Mexico), and Opélie Bertout (France).