Thomas A Bradley shares the story of costume creation and upcycling behind his latest work, The Circle (choreographed by Emanuel Gat).
12 garments adorn the 12 bodies of Scottish Dance Theatre.
Each garment consists of up-cycled suit jackets, pants and waistcoats pulled from the Dundee Rep Wardrobe.
I was keen to work with existing structures, motivated to expose the rich colours and textured lining of each clothing piece. Jackets are inverted, with shoulder pads exposed and folded in on themselves to reveal new mountainous ridges, while satin lined pants find their beginning inside waistcoat pockets, winding around the jacket breast and ending pleated in their own back pockets: twisted, knotted, bound and extrapolated beyond their functional state.
The resulting silhouettes are highly sculptural, manifesting as emerging structures and extensions of the dancers’ bodies in deep autumn tones: mustard, khaki green, beige, dark red and purple.
