The Role of a Costume Designer

Is there a limit to creativity? What challenges will you meet?

In this post you will explore how much a costume designer really has to know and how much of an impact they have on a dance

Required Knowledge

A costume designer must know the characteristics of materials (eg: whether they are absorbent or irritant) and how to work with them (eg: know how to use textile machinery). For example, if the costume had to appear as if they were wearing denim like the prisoners trousers in Christopher Bruce's Swansong, the costume designer must find an elastic material that looked like denim to provide the dancer with comfort and a range of movement big enough for the choreography. Materials that aren't stretchy, are irritative or and too tight should be avoided for dance costumes. Though not used in many dances, a costume should also know how to work with materials such as padding. Max George wore a padded costume in his Week 3 performance of Strictly Come Dancing 2020 in order to play the character Homer Simpson.

They should know about dance eras/styles and the choreographer's specific style so that the time the dance is set in can be communicated to the audience easily. In Fosse's Steamheat, you can see that the costume was designed based upon his style - influenced by Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. In comparison, many choreographers don't have a specific "look", instead they focus on the dance style or era. The dancer's in Jasmine Vardimon's, Park for example wear casual jeans, t-shirts and jackets because the dance is based on ordinary life and so they are wearing day to day outfits that people would wear in the 2000s (as it was first performed in 2005).

Its key that a costume designer has great knowledge on colours and what they show also. A lot of dances communicate though the colours of the set and especially costume and often the audience depend on it to help tell the story. Things such as the brightness of a colour can represent different emotions (muted=sad, vibrant=happy) as well as the colours alone (black= death/space, red=love/anger, blue=calm/sad... etc). In Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker we see the bold primary colours on the costumes in the Gobstopper scene with the intention of communicating positivity since the main character is in Candy Land.

Interrelationships

Many people are behind the scenes of a well made dance along with the dancers. This includes the set designers, choreographers, lighting designers, costume designers and more. This means the dancers must work with and communicate with them throughout the whole process of the piece from beginning to end in the following ways:

• Set designers - May have intentional clash or agreement between the colour of the set and colour of the costumes that needs to be arranged

• Choreographers - Needs to know the mood they are trying to set or story they are telling to design costumes that will compliment

• Lighting designers - May have intentional clash or agreement between the colour of the lighting and colour of the costumes that needs to be arranged

• Dancers - Must gather measurements of the dancers to assure costumes fit well