Nine male dancers will take the stage on Nov 3 for the North American premiere of Wayne McGregor’s Obsidian Tear in ready-to-wear designer clothing—the first-time a ballet has been "styled" instead of "costumed."
Typically, choreographers work with costume designers to create what the dancers will wear for new ballets. One of today’s most innovative choreographers, Wayne McGregor instead asked Katie Shillingford, renowned fashion editor of London’s AnOther Magazine, to style Obsidian Tear. "I knew it was a piece that shouldn't have costumes but clothing," said McGregor in AnOther Magazine. "And what I wanted to explore with Katie was: what is maleness? Gender definition, around classical ballet particularly, is very stereotyped, but my material has always been much more fluid, and so I wanted to work with her in order to reinforce that."
Shillingford approached the project like a fashion shoot by selecting pieces from the Spring-Summer 2016 collections by fashion designers including Vivienne Westwood, Craig Green, Hood By Air, and Assaf Reeb.
"It's an interesting collection of names, some new, some more established, and I wanted to try to make it inclusive—like a slice of the best, most interesting men's fashion from that time. Something that was interesting to me was that pretty much all of the garments were available for the general consumer," said Katie Shillingford. "Fashion is a business as well as an art. There is a range of designers used and although it is a more avant-garde edit, they were still all designs that were produced and sold. Of course, movement of clothing and functionality was also important, but the challenge was in the idea itself."