Digital Textile Printing for Contemporary Dance Costume

This collaboration involved an investigation of the possibilities that digital textile printing brings to costume for modern dance. My role as a textile designer was in the development of ideas for printed fabrics that were integral to Karen’s exploration of the sculptural cloth/body relationship and how this could be revealed to an audience during a performance event. Based on her many years of research, focusing on ways in which the design and structure of a costume interacts with a moving body in the context of a dance performance, Karen explored how the incorporation of digitally printed images could add another visual layer to a costume.

Karen Young is an artist and costume designer, based in New York who was a visiting fellow to the Centre for Fashion, the Body and Material Cultures (London College of Fashion and Central Saint Martins) in May 2007. Karen has worked with the Martha Graham dance company for many years and also with artist such as Matthew Barney. Her recent projects include the creation of costumes for the video art pieces of Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation as well as the costumes used in David Michalek’s Slow Dancing video installation as part of the Lincoln Center Festival 2007.