Costume Construction

A new topic

Over the past month we have started a new project in costume construction. We have to design make and document the costumes for a school production! As we are not doing a school production we have decided to make the costumes for Rock Challenge, an annual dance and drama competition that our school competes in. The theme for this years Rock challenge is A Midsummer Nights Dream. We are making the costumes for Titanias fairies. This includes building on a net tutu and decorating it as well as decorating a matching leotard and tights. Each costume is individual so each person in the group has a different dancers costume.

As these costumes are being worn on stage we have to ensure that they are produced well and are durable. This had to be done to enable ourselves to gain a distinction in this module.

To begin with we made the decoration that would go on the skirts, we firstly learn how to make roses. Firstly you cut out a wide strip of matterial and fold it in half, tacking with a needle and tread all the way down the open side of the fold. Once at the end slightly scrunch up the matterial. Fold the edge of the material down where you finished sewing, make sure it is tight at the bottom and tack until secure. Twist the matterial around so that the bottom of the rose will be in a spiral shape. Every so often tack the bottom of the rose tightly. Once at the end of the material, fold the edge down as you did at the begining and hide the open seem. tack securely and tie a knot at the end. Secondly we learnt how to make the leaves. Firstly you cut a strip of material, half the size of the material you cut for the roses, place the leaf template ontop and cut around it. Once you have many leaves cut of of material pair them up, pin them back to back. Tack round the edge leaving a small gap at the end. Turn the leave inside out using the hole left. Finally tack neatly along the open edge. Your leaf is complete.

Once we had all the decoration done we could continue with making the skirt. As we didnt have much time we used a basic net tutu as the base for our costume. We ripped many different colour strips that corresponded with our colour scheme. We then grouped the strips together and folded them in half. After this we pinned all the groups onto the skirt to ensure we had enough material satin strips. Once this was completed we tacked the grouped satin strips onto the elasticated waist band. This had to be done over and over again for each group so that they would be secure on the skirt. A way to test if the strips are securely attached was to tug lightly on them, if they came away the tacking was too loose if they didnt it was now considered secure. Once tacked tie a knot at the end of thread for safety. Once the stain strips had be securely attatched to the elasticated waist band we had to go round and cut the ends of the material into a point. This gave it a more fairy-like look which fits the theme and design criteria. After all the satin strips had been attached and cut it was now time to attach the decoration-ie the roses and leaves we made previously. We attacked the leaves first to the waistband and tacked repeatedly until secure like we did for the satin strips. To attach the roses you had to tack as before but through the centre of the rose so that the shape was still kept. Here is a picture of the finished skirt:

This is the finished skirt. My colour scheme is purple, yellows, and sparkly strips. I enjoyed making the skirt and found most of the techniques simple and easy to understand. I will continue this enjoyment when customising the leotard to go with the skirt. So that the skirt stands out on stage it will have fairy lights underneath it.

We have also help construct parts such as the roses and leaves for the main parts cotumes. here are some images of them.

<-Titanias costume left

 Cobwebs costume right ->

 <-Mustard seed and Peaseblossom left

All costumes right->

The Nutcracker performed by the English National Ballet.

One of my christmas presents from my cousins was to go and see the nutcracker performed by the english national ballet.I was so excited and the performance they gave didnt let me down.

We were in the upper circle so we could see mainly everything and the show was incredible. I remember watching the movie the barbie nutcracker when i was younger, so i knew the storyline well. But the barbie nutcraker had nothing on this performance.

The dancers were enchanting, the way they were so flexible and so able and free was hypnotising. The first half went by so quickly because i was enjoying it so much. Watching almost half of the cast on stage up on point yet holding themselves and being able to balance amazed me most. Considering i find it incredible when i can stand on my tip toes with my jazz trainers on for 3 seconds. I sat there mesmorised by their magnificent dancing and not one of them made a mistake fell or came out of character whilst still putting on the most amazing dance show.

I myself am not a trained ballet dancer but watching them made me want to be. Watching them i wished that i was as flexible, as talented as them. The dancing was just incredible, and every single movement told a story, and there was feeling in every step. the whole performance was just outstanding and i would recomend it to anyone.

Watching them on stage just makes me want to be in the performing arts industry even more.
*EDITED DUE TO COMMENT UNDERNEATH*
When watching the ballet i couldnt stop watching the main ballerina.  The way they used the character and create the choreography was amazing and vise versa. She was so in character and never went out of time or mood once. She performed to her best and was amazing. The night i watched it the understudy was performimg because the main ballerina was ill, you could see thorugh her performance that even though she was in character how much she wanted to be there and how much she so wanted that performance! The character of the ballerina was partly an individual role but however was some what reliant on the nutcracker character. You could see every move she did had some sort of meaning or relevance to the story/storyline. Every breath she took on stage was totally in character, every move she made was in character! she was faultless! Throughout the performance she had solo performances although they dwindled out as the character became more dependant and had more of a relationship with the nutcracker character! seeing her on stage and how amazing her characterisation was i will definitly try to use this experiance when performing.

before christmas...

Before we even go into what happened over the Christmas holidays we need to say what happened before. We were still working on jazz and we have now completed all 3 workshops- woo! If we recap there was the first one which was lyrical jazz taught by Kelly Myriam and Alice, then there was the rock and roll jazz which was taught by Shauna, Ellie, myself, Louise and Laura-Anne, and finally there was the street jazz taught by Chloe Shannon and Katie.

We all enjoyed teaching the dances to our class mates as we all like to be bossy and in charge, and i think i can say on behalf of the class that we all enjoyed learning them, even if we don't usually dance that sort of style. I know i personally enjoyed learning the other two, mainly because i have become more confident in the more contemporary side of dancing and i do dance street myself so i enjoyed learning that. In a way learning these jazz style dances has helped us, as a group, get to know the performing arts industry because when you go to learn a dance you are expected to pick it up whether you're a dancer trained in that style or not.

Nearing the end of the term we looked back at the dances and we went over them again, off camera. Just so that we remembered them. But then we took time out from dancing and took time to organise our folders or do the jazz workbook. We also watched our performance at our school carol concert. We just performed our hairspray routine that we performed at HMS has got talent.

Although the jazz unit is not completely over, i have enjoyed learning and performing jazz and i really like the style.