Hand in Glove: Reflections on a performed costume exhibition and the stories behind the garments

Abstract

This article details a conversation with seminal choreographer Lea Anderson, following her performed exhibition, Hand in Glove, which was staged at the V&A Museum, London, in April 2016. Hand in Glove featured over 300 costumes and accessories from the archives of Anderson’s two renowned contemporary dance companies, The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs. These companies played a prominent role in the evolution of British contemporary dance from the 1980s until their dissolution in 2011. Costume and design have long been utilized as transformative elements within Anderson’s work, giving rise to characteristic intertextual layering, blurring of boundaries and the destabilization of hetero-normative representations of the dancing body. Hand in Glove occupied the Raphael Gallery at the V&A from 22 to 24 April 2016 with vignettes from ten of Anderson’s works performed by students from London Contemporary Dance School. The conversation with Anderson outlines the process involved in the mounting of Hand in Glove alongside accounts of her early works, and the influence which design and costume exert in her choreography. Anderson describes her collaborations with designers, in particular Sandy Powell and Simon Vincenzi, and the ways in which her work with costume has evolved over time. Reflections on the implications of the exhibition itself (as a rare opportunity to view costumes performed live within a gallery space) are thus placed within the wider context of her choreographic practice and visual influences.

The costume designer as co-author of contemporary dance performance: Erika Turunen’s signature style

“…Hammond notes the influence of a new type of work, the 'scenographic context' of an immersive dance theatre performance (Hammond 2019: 243) to their artistic co-creation and specifically, her agential role through costume that she terms as 'translator' rather than as a softer 'interpreter' (Hammond 2019: 261). A similar entanglement between processes, outcomes, and collaboration is reflected by Connolly (2017) in her investigation into the work of choreographer Lea Anderson in the United Kingdom. Connolly's analysis identifies the ways in which collaborative exchange informs the processes of costume and choreography.…”

“…Yet, although the notion of collaboration lingers in most research that engages with costume design practice and processes within dance (e.g., Hammond 2012;Pantouvaki 2019;Man 2020;Rybáková 2020), the notion has not to date been approached as the key driver for research in the field of costume. Even in research where aspects of collaboration are more vividly present, for example, in the investigations by Connolly (2017) or Hammond (2019), the topic remains as a sidebar in the discussion about artistic practices. Contrastingly, the same notion more explicitly forms part of enquiries aiming to examine the convergence between artistic practices in the making of dance performance.…”