Contemporary Performance Artists Talk Style

Performers and artists often express themselves beyond the stage. Although artists may consider their only audience to be the people who come to their shows or sit in the seats of a theater, in reality, their audience may actually be everyday people encountered on the street.

I spoke with a few working artists on campus to talk about how costumes on and off the stage are influenced by the art they make, or the persona they are trying to express. In either case, style serves as a tool for voice and art, in and of itself, and a few artists on campus said their piece on this idea and their personal style.

Brendan Fernandes, a working contemporary artist focused on film, video, and performance is currently teaching at Northwestern University as an art instructor— and I am lucky enough to be taking one of his classes. Brendan is currently working on a performing piece on the Brooklyn skyline where he is organizing his performers to dress in costumes organized to appear as one unified body.

Brendan describes the work to be a collision between modern art and ballet: “In a kind of battle that eventually becomes a uniform dance.” This uniformity, though, is broken up by crackling paint on their otherwise completely white outfits. He describes them to be “very simple, short and t-shirt-like, but dipped in paint.”

"As they are moving, the paint will start to crumble and the dancers will start to kind of become one... I think about solidarity, critical mass in uniform or in the idea of dancing to create cohesion… I think this is a large understatement in my work— collaboration through acknowledgement of each other” 

Brendan was a former ballet dancer, and now, he uses ballet in his art as a material rather than a dance form. By using ballet in his performances to critique dance and the structure it commands, Brendan melds artistry, fashion, and dance as well, into one singular performance.
 
In his wardrobe, however, Fernandes throws out uniformity, making it a point to stand out instead. 

“It’s funny how I talk about solidarity in my work. In fashion, I like to be loud. I like to stand out and make a statement… I was born in Kenya and am of Indian descent, and sort of think about those ethnic colors and patterns."

Fernandes merges his personal history and fascination with these patterns to make them entirely his own. “Why can’t I wear pink pants with an orange coat with eyeballs on it or something? I want to question the binary aspects of fashion. Things like long shirts or things that expose skin seem feminized. I like the play with that.” 

Fernandes also uses fashion to create a character, perhaps wanting to wear a suit one day “but not a normal suit,” he says. Some fashion designers Brendan admires are Commes des Garçons, Raf Simons, and “fashion brands that try to challenge the way that we look at clothing.” These are the types of artists that he would love to collaborate with in his own artwork.

Collaboration allows performers and artists to work with and alongside one another. The dancer may be dressed by a costume designer or an artist may team up with a designer to work on their costume vision together. Fernandes is working with another artist and his own friend, Vincent Tiley, right now on his costume for a new piece. Rather than keeping the fashion world and the art world apart, Brendan wants to try to bring the two together. He would like to bring designers that have dressed him before and invite them to be involved in the costumes for his current dancers. 

What he personally wears as well can become costume-like. Speaking about form, Fernandes says, “I like to think about architecture and sculpture and how we can make fabrics capture air when we are running with them and kind of become sculpture with the bodies of the dancers.” 

He doesn’t usually make his own costumes, but sometimes Fernandes will sketch them and then come together with other artists to put their heads together. He has such a close relationship with his designers and trust in how they recognize the right way to capture the dancers’ movements. 

Another performer, Marisol Beaufront, also spoke with me about how fashion and clothing are used in her stage presence. As an actress, the performer gets to have the full power of expression and decides how they want to manipulate their body in the performance. In contrast to Brendan’s dancers, the actors on stage that Marisol interacts with get to assume their role using their own style but also must maintain a certain discipline based off of the director’s input as well as the script. 
 

Marisol Beaurand, a freshman theatre major at Northwestern and an aspiring actress and singer, dresses mostly for function. She is currently working on The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, working backstage, which is a requirement for all theater majors at some point. As a student, costume design depends on whether it is a student-run or university-run show. In the latter, there is costume design faculty member that designs all the costumes custom for the performers. In her current show, The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls, Marisol mentions that the Russian girls all wear heels while the American girls wear sneakers. The Russian girls are depicted as very put together and thin. How does this speak for the performance and its messages? She recognizes that the costume is a big part of the show’s cultural undertones. 

For a stu-co show, Marisol says that “a lot of the times it is your job to find the pieces for your costume.” 

“Usually a student will be in charge of costume design, and there will be a slideshow or a packet with a vision board for each character.” These vision boards may include photos or images that this student designer uses to imagine how they portray the character. From there, other students contribute input, saying if they have anything that may fit the images; the process becomes collaborative. 

Marisol also mentions that you as the actor have a say in what your character will wear.

“You could say, I don’t feel like my character would wear that, and it is a collaborative thing... even in the university run show. When I was doing my show, they thought that my character was super pregnant, and I said that I don’t think my character is that pregnant, and so we worked together and my costume changed. The actors input definitely matters because the character changes… based off of their vibe.” 

The costumes for these performers are a little more structured, considering they are playing a certain role, whereas Brendan had been creating his own roles. In this case, the performers are the artists so that role also comes with its own flexibility to bring in personal style. Marisol also says that in more contemporary shows, the artists will seek out more of what the performers are comfortable in, and asks about their style, then the directors “can flesh that out in a certain way.” This way the performer can relate to or further capture their character in their own performance.

On stage, the costumes are important because they speak to how character goes about their days. Costumes also decide the character’s mobility. “If a character is wearing a super iron pressed shirt, what does this say about them, how are they going to move around? Are they going to be able to squat down on the floor?” Marisol recognizes that the costume acts as a way that the character is able to communicate, and that you move differently when you wear certain things.

She is constantly on the move, so she chooses to devote more of her time to getting place to place than on outfit planning. Her day-to-day look is quite different from the costumes that she wears on stage. Fashion in terms of costume is another way to become the character. At times, her costumes affect her mobility, and restrictions actually contribute to how the role is presented.

“My clothes are more of a function thing. I usually walk out in a t-shirt. If I am dressing for a character, I have to dress more specifically… but maybe we have similar vibes, I have to think about when I am dressing as this character, is this what they are going to do? What I am going to do?” 

Often the style of the costume says a lot about the character. In her independent life, she dresses like most of us, based off of what it’s like outside. “I focus on my work more than trying to look super put together.” That being said, she also says that on certain days her image might be a little more important to her and she might want to put more effort in to how she decides to portray herself on a physical level. 

For these two artists, costumes are a part of the work they create, but their work and their style also contribute to their identity and how they choose to outwardly display themselves. In both cases, fashion and costume are integral parts of performance as well as vital to participating in the art world.