The Costume Closet Frolic
Costume experiments continue for ACOTAR & KKC dances
It begins with an image.
The image sparks a question that pauses my rabid page-flippery of a fantasy novel.
“Huh. I wonder if I already have a costume that I could use to transform that scene into a dance…” Sometimes I already know that the answer to this question is NO, and therefore, the variant question is, “I wonder if I have the fabric and embellishments that I could make into a costume for that scene…”
The first time this happened, I was reading Patrick Rothfuss’ novella, The Slow Regard of Silent Things for the first time. This glorious little book details a week-in-the-life of MoonFae Auri, one of the intriguing side-characters who inspired my original ginormous dance project, the Kingkiller Cosplay Dances. (I’ll provide all these links below if you don’t know what the bleep I’m talking about.)
I had already made, culled, and organized my Kingkiller Playlist. This meant that I was dancing to it obsessively, everywhere, everywhen, any chance I wasn’t otherwise occupied.
And then…
Dun-dun-dunnnnn…
The Question.
“I wonder if the thrift store has any super-cheapo little dresses I could purposely shred for Auri when she’s crawling and springing around in the Underthing…hmmm…”
And lo. They did. They were even on sale!
Thus did the costume frolic begin.
You can find that entire adventure in the Kingkiller Dance Gallery.
Sidenote: Whoa! Oh, my doooodness! I was wondering if Ko-Fi had gotten brilliant and realized that, for some of us, having the option to show the sequential order from the first post to the last is a really great tool. (I wish
would give us that option, too. For those of us who write serials and sequences, this would be soooo handy for our bingers and those who come into the serial after we’ve put a bunch of it up. Just sayin’.)Anyway, that gallery details the first frolics, my distress over distressing Auri’s dresses, and onward into makeup and hair fiascos—I mean trials, as well as adventures with costuming on green screen. Now you can view it from start to finish without having scroll allllll the way to the bottom and work your way back up. Granted, in this view there are no descriptions anymore, so you’ll have to click on them to see what the heck I’m doing, but it’s in the order of creation now. So…woot!
Anyway, amidst all this costume frolicking…just as I was really gaining some momentum and gearing up to film actual dances—
BLAM.
We’ve already covered the massive interruptions to this project, and why I’ve switched modes from Kingkiller to ACOTAR. So now let me take you through this design process as it’s happening, this time with a much greater understanding of what I’m doing, why I’m so called to do it, and the ways that I’ve figured out how to streamline this process in order to get far more efficiency out of it.
Because the first time I did something like this, I photographed and videoed makeup trials on one day. I messed with hair trials another time. I did costume trials separately, slapping on the bare minimum of makeup in order to not look heinous on camera, and popping wigs onto my head…eh, good enough that I could get the coloring right for the character.
Since my computer crashes over and over amidst any major video project (it’s just too old to handle the size of video footage anymore), I started taking photos, rather than video, except for when I needed to know if the costumes were moving the right way for what I needed or not. As such, I have tons of Kingkiller photos, and a few movement trials on video.
Seeing as how knee and spine issues, neuro-crashes, government bombardment, microscopic badasses, unforeseeable mishaps I could never imagine or plan for, and Purple Draccuses are (apparently) frequent occurrences around here, I have decided to do something very different this time.
THE NEW PROCESS
Now I’m doing all the choreography, costume trials, physical rehab, and wig experiments in advance. (Covid not only wasted my musculature. It also stole 1/3 of my hair, and I won’t be able to dye, bleach or even address roots until it’s repaired, so…wigs it is for however long of the foreseeable future.) Once all the pieces have been given the green light, I’ll get dolled up in the whole shebang including full makeup. After a few quick lighting and costume trials, I’ll just…
DANCE in the suckers.
I’ll take a peek at the footage as I go to see how I like it, but otherwise… Eh. If I get what I need the first time I play in these getups, great. If I don’t, I’ll do an updated shooting day. If for some reason, I can’t do that, I’ll fill in the gaps with nifty scenery pics and quotes and stuff.
Because you just really, really, REALLY never know when life is going to interrupt you and derail a big project like this so…
I dance while I can.
I frolic in the costumes like a little kid in the Halloween box, daddy’s old paint clothes, and mommy’s fancy-stuff.
Each day, I tinker with the project in one way or three. There are heavy physical days for rehab, choreography, and/or just plain dance practice. There are days when I need to let my knee and spine rest, so I do way more costume repair, sew stuff I don’t have yet, and hunt through the books to see what else I will need. I’m also a wig-newb, so that requires a whole lot of YouTube. Soon it will require scissors and tweezers to make my cheapo synthetic wigs as fabulous as I can. Then there is The Tattoo Bodysuit Project.
I’m going to finally have to learn how to draw for that. So I draw. And draw some more. And draw a little more. I’ll keep drawing until I stop hating it. Then I’ll draw on the bodysuit and the fleshy-toned gloves so I can dance over and over in Feyre’s tattoos.
Right now I’m scouring ✅ I just finished scouring ACOWAR Book 3 for:
Clothing details
Hairstyles
Skin and/or makeup details
Any setting items or props I would need
The character mindsets
The blow-by-blow of specific motions, stances, actions that were detailed and will dictate the sequence of events in the dances.
I only have 3/4 of ✅ none of Book 3 left to mine for details. For a whole boatload of it, she’s doing wings training and she’s at war. That means we’re costumed in fighting leathers or maybe a simple tunic and pants, so that scouring will go ✅ went even more quickly. I bombed through the rest of Book 3 and the novella in one night so I could check this project off the list.
✅
STUFF I DON’T ALREADY HAVE
I will need to build wings for this project. (Awwww, dang it. All those yards of semi-sheer subtle-sparkle that I inherited years ago, and never knew what to do with? I have it in black-and-midnight blue, as well as gold and red for accenting the curves and segments of bat-shaped Isis wings. Horrible. Just horrible, I’m telling you.)
I will need to build “the diamond cuffs.” (Confound it! That’ll just suck. Who needs diamond cuffs in their life? I do!)
I will need to build the pants and tunic for the Tri-Wizard Test Under the Mountain, with the sole purpose of gradually shredding, covering in muck, and destroying them. (Whaaaa—?! Rolling around in the muck? Frantically and humorously picking lentils out of fireplace ash in time with a super fun song? Wearing post-apocalyptic shreds of clothing and nasty, grungy makeup? Well, if I must. Sheesh. The things I do for art.)
I will need to build fighting leathers. (What?! Say it isn’t so. You know how much I hate leather. And fighting. Why did my nickname have to be Warrior Princess! Ugh.)
Yesterday’s triumph: I have been hunting and hunting and hunting for those friggin’ bags of my old SCA leather scraps, as well as the black leather with gold leaf-motif that I’d once started building a corset/vest out of. There is tons of yardage left over. You know…for things like armor scales…cuffs…
Lotta cuffs around here. If you know me well, you know how I feel about THAT. (Oh, riiiiight. We haven’t gotten to those scenes in my Persephone & Haides tales yet. Well, take a guess how I feel about cuffs.) 😈
Anywaaaaay…I have been hunting for these leather scraps since I started this flippin’ project. I’d thought I must have been completely off my rocker and chucked them in the Goodwill bins when I did the massive purge after having to overhaul my whole HVAC system. Which meant tearing apart the costume closet.
But nope! I did not give them away like a dorkus. I found them last night in a drawer I totally thought I’d looked in. Thrice.
I dunno. I blame Dain Bramage. Whatever, man.
There they are, so soon I shall have fighting leathers. Woot!
I also need to build the specific outfits for Under the Mountain faerie wine dances. You know…those dances. Since there’s only one of me around here and these dances will need to be filmed over multiple intensive days, and since I don’t have access to two magical wraiths who can body-paint me for each round of filming, I will need to decorate the fleshy-toned, full-length catsuits with the “intricate magical paint” underneath those sheer scraps of fabric that can barely be called dresses.
YES.
I already have ALL the fabric for those dresses. The blood-orange. The hot pink. The sparkle-black. And of course, the quintessential first one in white.
THE MATERIALS I ALREADY HAVE
Once upon a time—okay, twice upon a time, I was married. Shocker, I know. The second time, I co-owned a house. The house had a guest bathroom in ivory, cream, and sage green. It was lovely. This fabric I’ll be using was once the shower curtain. Now I’ve hacked it into panels for Feyre’s main captive-dress Under the Mountain.
You have no idea the level and variety of symbolism that synchronistically abounds in this project.
The Carnivale mask bought as a twin to an ex-husband’s mask. It shall now be worn for dances when Feyre lives in the court of a heavy-handed, controlling powder-keg she has to flee.
The white dress with the glorious green-and-bronze embroidery that I had originally bought to get married in before we decided to do the full shebang. It shall now be worn as the outfit that was made for the day after Feyre’s wedding. Which is exactly when I’d planned to wear mine. Alas. We got hit with a freak monster snowstorm two days before my wedding so…pants and boots it was.
My actual wedding coat with the lovely gilded train and the mile-long sleeves — oh, such a Fae garment, if ever there was one.
My actual wedding tiara that I have reclaimed and repurposed for dance because it’s just too pretty.
Roses. Roses. Roses. And thorns.
The bead-encrusted wedding gown my best friend found at a thrift store for a pittance, snagging it for me in case he really had meant it — that we’d do the big party someday and that going to the Justice of the Peace was only to get me on his health insurance right away because the Indigent Program was…ahem…just a little lacking. (I mean, I did only go for years with untested, untreated seizures on that program.)
Well, the party never happened. No biggie. I’d already had one with my first marriage — an idyllic ceremony to be remembered and sighed over for all time. Know what else never happened? Putting me on his health insurance. So when I packed up my world at Mach 10 prior to the divorce, I shoved that dress in behind my first wedding coat with the intention of someday raiding it for its gobs of lace, beading, and sparkle. Then I completely forgot about its existence through a cross-country move and five others.
Until now.
That crystalline cake-topper gown is marred with a spot of blood in all that white. Reminds me of the fact that, several hours after the Justice of the Peace, I just happened to come down with one of the worst UTIs I’ve ever had. Then I had to return to the emergency room an hour later — that’s how I learned I’m allergic to the antibiotic they gave me. The wonderful ER staff called me “The Bride.”
Never did get a honeymoon night for that marriage.
Heh heh heh heh…
Didn’t get one for my first marriage either because…Dain Bramage neuro-collapse.
Ohhhh, Synchronicity, I really am one of your faevorite godchildren, aren’t I? Because it’s all artistic fodder. It’s all paint on the canvas.
WHY I’M REALLY DOING THIS
Last night, something occurred to me about this project. I’d already known why my heart needs so badly to dance this character, these metaphors, these images, these themes. I’d known that since I started covering my Inspiration Altar with roses, masks, blood-hued jewels upon a path of white, as well as stars, candles…
Daggers.
But I only just realized why I’m so obsessive about the costumes. (Besides the obvious DUH of the fact that they’re fun.)
Do you have any idea the treasure trove I possess?
Not only was I a professional performing artist for nearly thirty years. I also inherited countless bounty in costumes and costume-making supplies from my friends and students whenever they decided to quit dancing or — more often — when they moved away and had to pair down. Some of this treasure I’ve given away or sold. But not all.
Other friends from my medieval reenactment days knew I was the newb. A college student newb with almost zero budget for fancy stuff. So they generously let me paw through their garb and supplies before they dumped bags and boxes at the Goodwill.
I have had some of these supplies since the ‘90s, but I haven’t always known what to do with them. Some of this stuff is so magnificent that I keep pulling it out, year after year. I lay the supplies on the floor, mulling, imagining, rearranging.
Scowling in frustration.
Putting it back in the drawer.
Piling it into moving truck after moving truck, wondering why in blazes I bother anymore.
Because I’m not done with them, that’s why. I’ve felt it in my guts every time I do a decluttering round. They’ve just been waiting for the right inspiration.
Like twenty yards of simple, flat, crimson cords. No dangles. No flash. No ornamentation. Why would I ever need that? But something has told me over and over to keep it.
Who knew I would need to wrap all my limbs and my crimson karate gi in that much cording for Kingkiller’s merc warrior-chicks, Vashet and Penthe?
Who knew I would ever have a need for that red gi either — the gi of my 2nd degree black belt that I never really got to wear because my life collapsed in a second divorce, and I moved away right after my test. (In truth, I’d already moved. I just drove back week after week until the test to finish what I’d started.)
There are other costumes I inherited just before that move and that I’ve never had the chance to wear. Three of my friends/students quit dancing and moved away just before I had to hurl my life into boxes and move myself. For a year, a lot of it lived in a storage unit while I dwelled by the mercy of a friend in her basement. Then I crash-landed in Arkansas and had to stop performing, teaching, driving…really, doing much of anything until my brain healed again.
Well, it’s never healed to the point where I’ve been able to return to stage lights. Teaching becomes more and more difficult with every brain trauma and every neuro-crash like the one I had this past fall. People shrug and swat their hands because I “should just listen to what the Universe must be trying to tell me.”
They say I should get over all this dancing nonsense and let it go.
Well, I’m not done with dancing.
Not at all. In spite of the arthritis and spinal degeneration, in spite of the torn meniscus, in spite of my aging body and aging skin and gray hair that I’ve had since that traumatic year after a drunk driver rammed me…
I’m not done dancing. I’m not even done performing. I’m not done teaching. I’m not done playing dress-up in these astounding treasures I was given by other treasures — human-heart-type treasures.
Some of these costumes have never gotten to dance, and others have only been played in once. This wealth of supplies I’ve boxed and hauled and boxed and hauled because I just feel that they were meant for me to dance in them…
At long last, I can finally SEE what I want to do with a bunch of these costumes and supplies.
I might only sporadically be capable of choreographing intricate, full-length dances. I might only sporadically be capable of memorizing them enough to perform them.
But you know what I can do?
I can scour books that bring imagery, color, and story swirling through my head with the demand that I bring them to life through dance.
I can hunt down descriptions of what these cherished characters are wearing, what’s going on in their heads and hearts as they wear these things, and what their bodies do to express that.
I can take detailed notes, and then scamper down to my costume closet to fling fabric around in a frenzy of, “No. No. No — Eureka! That’s it!”
I can snap a selfie of the costume so I remember what the heck I designed, then collect them on my costuming racks and atop my dresser and on the floor under the table in their plastic shoeboxes. (That’s how I store my heavy, sparkly, encrusted cabaret costumes, BTW.)
Last night, as I was looking in the mirror at yet another flowy, bespangled getup, I asked myself why I was grinning in such exuberant delight. Why I was hanging a gazillionth Spring Court costume on the rack when I already had a bazillion of them plotted. Why I had added four more songs to my Dancing Feyre rehearsal playlist, when I had already gathered more songs than I would ever be capable of choreographing between now and the day I die.
And then it hit me.
Because I’m not gathering these costumes and these songs in order to create choreographies to them all.
Some? Definitely. But not even most.
This is a vastly different mindset than the one that I used to operate on for stage. Now that I think about it, it’s far closer to what I used to do in the restaurants. Each night when I was scheduled to perform, I grabbed the costumes that I was inspired to wear, and the tape I felt like dancing to.
Then I went to the restaurant and danced my spangles off, solely in the moment.
With this project, it’s a similar rhythm but with even less pressure to “perform perfectly.” Because if I get tired, if I trip, if I blow a musical cue, if my face does that weird thing and I don’t realize it until I see the video footage, if my bracelet catches on my belt fringe, if I drop my sword, if — no, WHEN I step on my veil…
WHO FUCKING CARES?!
It’ll hit the cutting room floor, and I’ll re-film.
Or not. I’ll use some other image or video clip for that bungled part of the music instead.
This is simply an elevation of that experiment I did when I mourned how long it had been since my old SCA coats and belts had gotten to play, now that I no longer do medieval reenactment. So I brought the costume rack upstairs. Each day I had the energy and urge to film, I swiped a costume off the rack. Then I just…put on whatever music inspired me in that moment, in that outfit, and I danced.
Period.
That’s what I’m gearing up to do here.
I’m not designing makeup, hair, and costumes for a dance series.
I’m designing makeup, hair and costumes because it’s fun to play with them, and I want to show you how they move and sparkle and flare and unfurl. It’s art. It’s entertainment. It’s chicken soup art therapy for my ravaged soul. It’s something I can still do, even when my brains and my body aren’t fully back to snuff for professional-caliber dance performances I could put on a stage and charge money for.
I can’t count on my body and brain to ever get back there. If it does, great. But if not…
Eh. I’m not waiting around for it anymore.
So I have to give myself the grace and compassion to not worry about choreography. I jot it down whenever the Muse gifts me, and I’ll memorize whatever I can.
But this is not the focus of these projects. Neither is the pearl-clutching concern of, “I need to dance and dance and dance, more and more and more hours so my improv chops are so honed and so badass that even when I’m pulling it out of my butt on the fly, nobody would ever know the difference between that and my old choreographies—”
NO.
My body cannot take me dancing and dancing and dancing, more, more, more to hone that level of improvisational chops again.
In striking more sets of shackles off my old modes of creation and performance, my exuberance for this project triples. It was already pretty high up in the clouds.
With the understanding that I’m about to play dress-up in my costumes for the sole purpose of showing you how groovy they are in motion to songs that make me think of my favorite fantasy characters…
Well, now I’m pretty much over the moon and into the stars about what I’m doing.
© 2024 Hartebeast
“You don’t have nearly as much time as you think you do.” - None of us do. Why “good enough” has to be good enough, and why I share my rinky-dink dance videos and writing as they are, instead of waiting around for the Someday Whens. Someday when I have an editor. A publisher. A marketer. A videographer. A computer that can handle a fancy video effects program. A brain that isn’t seizing. A meniscus that’s healed… NO. This is why.
Blathering about when I shifted from choreography to playing in costumes, and from stage to video
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas - the book and the series that inspired this project.
The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss - a week in the life of darling Auri
My original ginormous dance project: The Kingkiller Cosplay Dances
Making of the playlist that started it all: Dew In the Bracken
My spotify where you can find all these playlists, as well as the ones for the stuff I write and for my Elements System. And for…like…many other moods.
Cuffs. Soon. 😈 In the Persephone & Haides tales I’ve been uploading to Substack.
 | A guest post by
|