The costume

I started flipping through the book: Analyzing Performance: dance, theatre and performance by Patrice Pavis. I found a a few quotes about costuming that i've written down. In addition to making my own notes , i think analyzing the costume in respect to the body and the space it occupies will aid in the development of my proposed re - creation of the dragon costume and prehaps another project that will be a contemporary costume relating to a specific theme unknown at the moment. I think contrasting the traditional dragon and devil mas and costume performance against the contemporary costume (a king or queen individual) will be great grounds from which to view the effects of festival setting and theatre and its effect on how the wearer performs the given costume and its cultural significance.

Like any sign of performance, a costume is both a signifier (pure materiality) and signified ( element intergrate into a system of meaning). In fact this is exactly how Roland Barthes conceives of the “ good costume” : it “must be material enough to signify and transparent enough not to turn its signs into parasites.”

Pg 174 (Analyzing Performance: dance, theatre and performance by Patrice Pavis)

Costume and Body

A body is "worn" and "carried" by a costume as much as a costume is worn and carried by the body. Actors develop their character and refine their underscore while exploring their costumes; one helps the other find its identity:

A sleeve that is too wider or too narrow, too long or too short, can alter the stage projection of a character , and require from th actor a modification of his attitude; this then provokes subsequent inventions/constructions in terms of the costume, and so it goes on.

Costume and Space

Costume often constitutes a kind of traveling scenography, a set reduced to a human scale that moves with the actor: a decorcostume, as the costume designer Claude Lemaire calls it.

With the above quotes, I will try to create a series of diagrams that illustrate the relationship of the costume to body and space.