The Hugging Project
Costumes, 2024
The Hugging Project is a contemporary dance by Scarlet Perdereau and Irad Timberlake performed. The costumes for this dance were designed and created as a team consisting of myself, Xingyi Chen and Amelia Feeney with additional construction support from Jade Newman Turner.
From the very beginning, we worked together brainstorming ideas. Only when it was time to construct the physical costume did we divide into separate tasks.
Initial Design Collages
Project Background
Details of The Hugging Project embroidery
In my research for the Hugging Project, I came across Healing Sutras by Erin Endicott. In Sanskrit, sutra translates to thread. With Healing Sutras, Endicott used walnut ink to ‘stain’ antique linen and cotton garments. Letting the ink spread through the delicately woven fabrics, it created something like a map, that Endicott followed with red thread. Endicott describes the collection as soft sculptures, rather than two-dimensional, traditional embroidery works.
What I found most inspiring in Endicott’s work was the idea of weaving healing wounds. I find that weaving something, specifically for another person, is a true act of love. I think her choice of using DMC’s 321 thread, a deep and powerful red was important. In my perspective, I don’t see the red spreading over the wounds as blood, I see it as love. With my vision of red being a visceral and potent symbol in our designs, I found the similarities between Endicott’s work and my groups intentions. In The Hugging Project, I felt there was a wound between Scarlett and Irad, something that kept causing them to fall apart. At the same time, I found that there was a connection, something that was always bringing them back to each other. The idea of being connected through thread, or an invisible string, woven between two figures that keep them circling back to each other was strong. The connection between Scarlett and Irad to me was love, though this love, this stained thread is what was also making them deteriorate in each other’s arms.
In Greek Mythology, The Thread of Fate encompasses the idea that a person’s life may be determined by the thread of fate the binds their future. Clotho spins the thread of life. Lachesis, measures the thread of each person’s life and Atropos, cuts the thread, determining the time and manner of death. I found this story inspiring and with the clear linear journey that our designs were centered around, evoking the idea that these two figures, Scarlett and Irad, were two halves of a broken string, trying to mend itself back together, without understanding their fate was already predetermined by the Gods. A linear journey and its relationship with the desire to be complete, became the most prominent themes in my group’s design.
John Melhuish Strudwick, A Golden Thread (detail) (1885)
Designers, Performers, Costume Construction for the Hugging Project. May 2024.
Photos by Xingyi Chen