We have explored in multiple posts in the past few years the connections between fashion and dance, but also between fashion houses and choreographers.
AAs you may remember from a previous post, in 2018, Maria Grazia Chiuri turned to dance and to a choreographer to present her S/S 19 collection for Dior.
For that occasion, Chiuri commissioned to Tel Aviv-based Sharon Eyal a unique choreography, performed by Eyal herself and eight dancers from her company.
Yet these weren't Chiuri's first experience in ballet and dance: in 2016 she worked with the Rome Opera when she was creative co-director of Valentino, designing costumes for "La Traviata" directed by Sofia Coppola, and, in 2017, as Dior's creative director, she was commissioned costumes for the American Ballet Theatre's Works & Progress at the Guggenheim.
The connection between the French maison and ballet is particularly apt as Christian Dior collaborated with Roland Petit on the ballet "Treize Danses" (1947), and one the most famous clients of the house was dancer Margot Fonteyn (Dior himself designed her wedding dress).
A new fashion and ballet collaboration was launched today, a film on Dior’s YouTube channel, to celebrate International Dance Day. Officially established in 1982 by the Dance Committee of the International Theatre Institute, International Dance Day celebrates and promotes the discipline in all its expressive forms.
The date, 29th April, was chosen to commemorate the birthday of Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), the French choreographer and dancer considered the creator of modern ballet.
Entitled "Nuit Romaine", directed and choreographed by Angelin Preljocaj and set in in the 16th-century stately Renaissance Palazzo Farnese in Rome, headquarters of the French Embassy in Italy, the film is divided into eleven musical segments.
The plot revolves around the goddess of the night, Nox, who brings darkness and sensuality to the palazzo during one of her mysterious visits.
"Nuit Romaine" stars étoile Eleonora Abbagnato, director of the ballet corp of the Teatro dell'Opera and an étoile at the Opéra National de Paris, and étoile Friedemann Vogel, with the dancers of the Rome Opera Ballet.
The film starts with two cherubs dressed in one shoulder tunics and tulle wings, dancing in the attic of the palazzo.
The palazzo is actually another character in this story: the dusty environment, wooden floors and chipped paint contrast with the immaculate white costumes in the opening section of the film, but then we discover other spaces of the building, gilded rooms and halls covered in frescoes.
As the story progresses, art becomes another protagonist: the angels we saw in the opening section pose like Raphael's cute iconic cherubs in the painter's Sistine Madonna, or recreate the Creation of Adam by Michelangelo, from the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.
This time Chiuri avoided making the same mistakes committed in the segment of "Nuit Blanche" when Dior's logo was unnecessarily prominent on the dancers' costumes. Indeed, there's no visible logo or label here.
Nox, the main character, is dressed in a signature Chiuri by Dior nude tulle gown with a splash of black to evoke the night, but there are other notable costumes.
In one scene a painting portraying a cardinal evokes a vision of a female cardinal or popess in red pants with a sculptural pleated cape, a look accessorized with a mitre hat and magnificent rings on 8 fingers. In another segment, three dancers perform a sort of sinuous serpentine dance dressed in golden bodysuits with strips of fabrics wrapped around the torso to form a soft yet firm armour.
In one interlude the camera focuses on the dancers' feet hidden away behind colourful tapestries with a geometrical print overimposed on a houndstooth background. When the camera reveals us the dancers, we discover that they are wearing bodysuits with the same pattern.
There's more to see in the segments that follow with hand-painted costumes and tulle gowns that evoke the attires of the characters and the palette of the Carracci frescoes on the vault of the Farnese Gallery.
Accessories are not merely decorative, they do indeed have a precise purpose - creating a subtle soundscape: as they shake, the beaded necklaces, bracelets and anklets matched with white and dark grey fringe dresses covered in cascades of beads, create a rhythm that the dancers follow (even though they also prove to be a bit of a distraction as they visually break the linearity of the dancer’s bodies).
Making the costumes and the film wasn’t easy as the project was done while there was still the pandemic and travel restrictions were in place, so Chiuri worked in lockdown with half the team in Rome and half in Paris and the Biagiotti atelier in Rome lent a hand to complete the costumes.
Style-wise the costumes are at times more Vionnet than Dior, while the film is a conceptual mix combining art, architecture, religion and fashion.
In some scenes, Angelin Preljocaj tried to recreate the moods of some of the Roman tableaux in Paolo Sorrentino's film "La Grande Bellezza" (also through the operatic music, including Alexander Balus, HMV 65 Aria "Convey me to some peacefull shore" interpreted by Sandrine Piau, and Richard Wagner's Wesendonck-Lieder: 3. Im Treibhaus interpreted by Cheryl Studer) with vague references to Federico Fellini's "Roma" (the female cardinal/popess segment).
The choreographies go from conceptual and sensual to rigorous and cold, and maybe it wasn't the best choice to get Preljocaj to cover both the roles of director and choreographer as the perspective we are given is, often, that of the choreographer. A proper director would have instead been an added bonus and would have maybe injected a bit more warmth in the film.
The end of the film with the dancers on swings in vestal gowns, for example, could have maybe been avoided as it looks like a perfume advert, rather than the poetical conclusion to a dance film.
As a whole this is a great effort for International Dance Day, but it wouldn't have hurt if behind the exquisite draping, pleating, beading and hand-painting of the costumes, they would have added a bit more passion and emotion to provoke in the viewers that much needed post-pandemic catharsis Chiuri believes that art can provide us with.
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