Yesterday's post closed with a reference to ballet, so let's move from it to look at the costumes designed by Tsumori Chisato in 2017 for the New York City Ballet's "Pulcinella Variations".
Choreographed by Justin Peck for a cast of nine on the suite from Stravinsky's narrative "Pulcinella," (written between 1919 and 1920) on Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's music (Peck uses the suite rather than the ballet), the piece is now part of the NYCB repertory and will be on again on Sunday with its original cast, featuring Sterling Hyltin, Sara Mearns, Tiler Peck, Brittany Pollack, Indiana Woodward, Jared Angle, Andrew Scordato, Gonzalo Garcia and Anthony Huxley.
The choreography is very dynamic and fun, with fast steps, at times floaty and circular, in both solos and duets (a tradition for this ballet that, for example, combined classical steps with unusually energetic movements in the 1980 choreography by Heinz Spoerli) that go along well with Chisato's whimsical hand-painted costumes.
Slightly reminiscent of the painted costumes for the Ballets Russes and in particular for De Chirico’s costumes for "Le bal" (1929), Chisato's designs are brightly coloured and ingenious: eyes and flowers decorate the bodice or the tutus, while one bodysuit seems to be split in half, a sort of combination of two costumes, a full nude bodysuit and a yellow one incorporating a tutu.
There are obvious references to Picasso (who did the costumes for the first staging in May 1920 of this ballet) and Salvador Dalì with some Niki de Saint Phalle (was Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle's Stravinsky Fountain in Paris an inspiration, maybe?) thrown in, references mixed with the costumes from the Italian Commedia dell’Arte.
The classical costume for the Neapolitan melancholic servant Pulcinella (Punch) may not be there, but Chisato moved from the structure of the Commedia dell’Arte: in the latter performers would represent stock characters and in this ballet we have the same concept, but dancers, all of them performing a solo and a duet, use the suite to present their unique skills and talents and reveal in this way to the audience their personalities.
Between jumps and pirouettes, you realise there are two constants in this ballet - lightness and joy - clearly embodied by the surrealist costumes.
There is a lot to take in, between visually striking colours, abstract silhouettes, colourful eyes draped across the chest of ballerinas and a geometrical twist that gives some of the designs an added sense of dynamism. One tutu is for example a geometrical tiered structure, imagine a round ziggurat and you get an idea.
Chisato did the drawings for the costumes while watching the dancers perform and that had an impact on the final costumes that ultimately also reflect the asymmetrically structured quirky score composed by Stravinsky.
But if Chisato was influenced in designing her creations by seeing the dancers rehearsing, the performers are in turn influenced by the costumes in their movements.
Chisato's ingenious costumes are one of the reasons why the piece, originally created for The New York City Ballet's Fall Fashion Gala in 2017, entered its repertory and on Sunday the piece will be staged again with "Serenade" with music by Tschaikovsky and choreography by George Balanchine (costumes by Jean Lurçat, 1935; Candido Portinari for American Ballet Caravan, 1941; uncredited, 1948; Karinska,1952) and "Glass Pieces" with music by Philip Glass and choreography by Jerome Robbins (costumes by Ben Benson).
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