hyperallergic.com: In 1920s Hamburg, a dancer couple created wild, Expressionist costumes that looked like retro robots and Bauhaus knights. The dancers were Lavinia Schulz and Walter Holdt, and through the new Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG) online collection, their tragic, forgotten story can be rediscovered.
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When I was looking at this article for the first time I was looking at the avante garde costumes in the photos and they did seem very out of the ordinary. However, when you want the costumes in the video, they don't seem as weird and out of place. I think it's because in our current age, we can associate more things with these costumes that make them more of the norm compared to avante garde costumes to this day. For example, the first costume in the video looks like a human bug creature. Now that is a relative answer, but i associate with that immediately because of the music in the background. It's interesting to think how much of an impact lighting and sound and any other background elements can have on a piece or performance. It allows the audience to change their opinions of the performance entirely then viewing a still object or photograph.
I would love to learn more about the costumes as they relate to this time period in which they were made and the artistic and cultural influences that created them. I love the dynamic quality they have as shown in the video, and how they bounce and move along with the dancer to give the appearance of flowing motion and movement. The costumes themselves remind me of cubism and modernism, and they look kind of like monster characters you would see in a children's book. The most intriguing part of these designs for me was the bulky quality and how the designers decided on large full-body costumes for a dance piece instead of something that would be easier to move around in. It gives the dances a much different feeling than if they had been wearing a leotard and tights. They express the rhythm and movement of the figures in a much more conspicuous way compared to the relative subtlety of a traditional costume.
Considering the era in which these costumes were made, these costumes are totally out of this world crazy. However, as art changes and time passes, we absorb the weird and normalize it; it's what artists do. Looking at these costumes from the 21st century, these are definitely strange, but nothing I couldn't image seeing. Heck, there was that Animorphs class that took place last semester. It's interesting to think that these costumes were used for dance, a genre that requires a specific type of costume, namely clothing that allows for a lot of movement. These costumes are restricting and probably very hot, since most of them require a full mask. I wonder if what they defined as "dance" is what we would consider dance today, or if a "dance" of this nature back then was something like a performance piece now. One final question: in the video, is that the original choreography?
This reminder that experimental costume design existed long before it was used as a tactic to make theatrical productions more "interesting" speaks to the roots of modern costume ingenuity. More so, the obvious ways in which the costumes shown break all the rules of dance costuming - the clunky shapes, the heavy materials, the distorting of the body's inherent shape - challenge how our world perceives the purpose of design. These costumes clearly were not created with the intention of being flattering or of making their wearer look more attractive. On the contrary, they use the wearer as a vehicle through which to tell their own story, a concept so lost on the designers of today. The costumes, in this case, are the characters, and I find this highly clever of the dancers who made them not just as minds of their own era but as minds in the grand scheme of design. The role reversal between the actor and the garment is fascinatingly thought-provoking, and makes me want to see more of this in the performance art of today. Thank goodness these images have been discovered and are being made so publicly viewable - I think their unique content will resonate with many like minds and help to fuel a conversation in the world of design about what happens when the costume becomes the character. Once the topic sparks, I'll be excited to see how this influences future stage productions nationally as well as across the globe.
This is such an unusual niche of history that rarely is ever seen or discussed, as analyzing the history of dress usually centers around mainstream fashion and dance attire. MKG should be applauded for trailblazing the path to promoting a wider knowledge of these subjects, through their incorporation into their online archive and restoration of these fabulous pieces. The pictures were immensely interesting as they provide such a start contrast from traditional dance costumes seen in the twenties, which emphasized the shape of the dancers to compliment their fluid movements. The boxy nature of these costumes informs the dancers' movements, thus it was ingenious of the museum to schedule a performance with costume replicas to show the audience how the structural nature of the costumes influenced the dancer's movements. The Shakespeare-esque tragedy of the designers is such a travesty, yet a reflection of a society which was much less open to "avant-garde" work that was considered on the outer edges of society. It would be intriguing to research these artists more and learn more about their background, which I would assume clearly influenced their unique designs.
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