Archive for design
August 5, 2008 at 4:05 pm · Filed under dance, designers, candice thompson, CANDICE, design, LOLAstretch
Finding this image yesterday was an “aha!” moment for me. Often patterns can be really dangerous, especially when put on a leotard. But here is an example of how to do it right. Thanks Pucci! You can expect to see the influence of this when my new fall colors for LOLAstretch are announced on Friday. Maybe there will be more than just a fabulous pumpkin or jade……
{Gymnast leotard designed by Pucci for NY Times Magazine shoot. They are a design house famous for prints, as evidenced!, for those who might not be in the fashion know.}
Don’t you wish the American Team was really wearing this in Bejing, instead of the rhinestone dusted usual?
Recent Posts by candice thompson
November 17, 2007 at 5:33 pm · Filed under dance, CARLA, seattle, apparel, design, carla korbes, modetta perfromance gear, tony lavilla, activewear, pafci northwest ballet, chalnessa eames
Hello Wingers!
I would like to share with all of you this great sports clothing company, MPG, Mondetta Performance Gear from the Canadian clothing company, Mondetta!! Here at the Pacific Northwest Ballet we are lucky to have direct contact with MPG’s clothes and development because one of our soloists, Chalnessa Eames, is married to one of the principals and the CEO of MPG. Chalnessa has shared with us dancers her husband’s passion in creating fashionable and at the same time comfortable clothing for all types of people with an active lifestyle, and of course for us dancers.
MPG’s clothes are great for ballet or doing errands around the city. All the pants are flexible and fit nicely on the body and the best part of all they always look great. Their shirts and jackets are perfect because they keep you warm in class and in rehearsal but they are breathable so you never feel too hot or the opposite, wet and cold. As well as using many of the dancers as models, MPG has created a SOUL card program, which gives a discount to athletes and professionals that embody the dedication, drive, and passion that the creators at MPG respect. If you are a dancer or a professional athlete check your mail boxes to see if you have received your SOUL card. If you didn’t get one, contact Tony Lavilla, Brand director of MPG, and he will get you one. His e-mail is: tony@mondetta.com . You guys can also check their clothes at their website: http://www.mpgsport.com/
But wait, I still have more to tell you about MPG. To add to their incredible clothes, MPG is also reaching out to help the world. This feels very important to me and I want to make sure people are aware about their efforts. The more people that reach out for others the better our world can become. Here is some information, from Tony Lavilla, about how MPG is helping many families in Africa.
GIVES BACK PROGRAM
MONDETTA CHARITY FOUNDATION
At MPG, we believe going forward includes giving back.
From our beginning, we have dedicated 1% of gross sales to the
Mondetta Charity Foundation (MCF), a completely separate entity from
the Mondetta Clothing Company. The MCF was established to provide
assistance to ease some of the suffering in Africa due to devastating
problems such as AIDS and the ravages of poverty.
Four principals of the Mondetta Clothing Company were born in Uganda
and Kenya and have deep-seated emotional ties and a strong allegiance to the African Continent. While the problem of AIDS remains enormous,
MCF aims to tackle the hardships of life in these regions by taking
action where it counts, and push toward the vision of a better,
healthier future for those nations.
Tony Lavilla, Brand Director
Bravo to them!! Here is what our dancers are saying about MPG:
“I can stretch, keep warm and show clean lines. MPG has brought fashion into
performance.” Chalnessa Eames
“MPG is so multi-use, so fashionable you wouldn’t expect it to be
comfortable too.” Rachel Foster
“Knowing the background of the company, I love that MPG is created by
people who are passionate about creating high quality clothes and
giving back to their community at the same time.” Kaori Nakamura
“Up until now, you couldn’t move in beautiful clothes. That’s no
longer true with MPG. I feel comfortable, totally at ease, and I look
amazing. MPG is going where no one else has gone.” Olivier Wevers
Hope you guys enjoy MPG as much as we at PNB (dancers, ballets masters, employees, all our significant others) are enjoying it!!!
Chalnessa Eames
Casey Herd
Kaori Nakamura
Peter Boal teaching class. Sorry about the blurry picture, I didn’t want to disturb class too much and one try to get the picture is all could do!!!
Ben Griffiths posing to show off his MPG shirt before class. Jordan and Seth are also at the barre wearing MPG.
Kaori Nakamura watching rehearsal.
Recent Posts by carla korbes
October 22, 2007 at 12:47 pm · Filed under studio, architecture, technology, TONY, science, theatre, space, dance technology, visible, stage, video cube, sarah lawrence college, you, politics, set design, performance, school, michel foucault, discipline, dance house, design, audience, intermission, ASHLEY, performance space, theory, art installation, THE ( INTER ) MISSION, social network
Over the past few weeks of my Dance and Technology class at Sarah Lawrence College, the students and I have been programing, dissecting and repurposing surveillance systems to develop mediated performance outlets/environments. To aid and inform our strategies in this project we have been thinking and reading about panopticism.
What is panopticism anyway? wiki wiki
Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a theoretical architecture imagined in the 1780’s, is illustrated above. The name literally means the “all-seeing place.” He describes it as a multi-purpose architecture whose design principles are applicable to constructing factory, school, prison, hospital or asylum. A multi-story ring of individual cells surround a central watchtower; every cell is visible from the watchtower while the watcher remains invisible.
The viewer can see everything while remaining invisible.
This panoptic prison named Presidio Modelo, built under the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado in Cuba, once held the one and only Fidel Castro. It is now a national monument.
Foucault uses the Panopticon to analyze the new ways in which power is exercised in the modern world and the role surveillance technologies play in creating a disciplined/docile body. He describes Bentham’s architecture as a kind of multi-staged performance space.
The unverifiable possibility that a subject is being observed at any time is the essential mechanism by which the machine operates. Visibility, as Meghan noted in class, makes one take responsibility for their own subjection.
He who is subjected to the field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play simultaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection. Discipline and Punish 202
What does this have to do with performance? Everything…
Foucault describes the stacks of cells; “They are like so many small cages, so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible.”
In one way the panopticon is like a super-theater, a nesting of many stages.
However Foucault stresses that surveillance architectures are exactly the reverse of those of theater. He writes, “We are much less Greeks than we believe. We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine.” Survellence allows one to see many while theater and spectacle is based on many seeing one
Compare the structure of the Panopticon to that of the Globe Theater.
Different yet the same. Definitely involved in a complex tangle.
This assembly can be used as a dance technology. On April 28th and 29th 2007 Martha Williams directed and performed in a dance installation entitled Stacked, converting an out of business clothing store into a surveillance menagerie. Each dancer took residence in one of nine changing rooms which they themed and designed the interiors of. Camera feeds from each cell were composed and projected in the central room so that all of the dances could be seen at once.
Turning the panopticon back into a performance space constitutes a double reversal.
With this in mind, take another look at the dance-cube I prototyped last fall. In this staging the cameras are on the perimeter of the studio so that the gaze is directed from the outside in (as in theater) rather than from the inside out.
Though still, looking at this dance I am reminded of the cells of the panopticon.
“They are like so many small cages, so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible.”
Could we characterize the structure of the internet as panoptic? Here is a great essay that explores that question.
This very space is haunted by panoptic geometries. Have a look at the contributor list in the sidebar, look at all those little faces, “perfectly individualized” subjects you can see all at once and may click on to reveal “so many small theaters.”
The design of social networking and internet dating sites, showing all your friends faces in an array, seduces us with a kind of panoptic fantasy, being able to see many at once. This is where things become slightly more complicated. Just like the panopticon embeds tiny theaters in an array, these social technologies embed so many small panopticons in a matrix of connectivity. Each cell is now its own theater and watchtower.
All these ideas should not creep us out. Rather, they should inform our thinking about performance and visibility and the way technology provides new venues for artistic expression. It is an open problem. In my estimation projects like Martha William’s Stacked, my dance-cube, or The(Inter)Mission are all part of a project to reverse-the-panopticon. While flirting with aspects of surveillance and making the subject hyper-visible, they enhance communication rather than simply separate us into little boxes.
So next time you feel like you are under surveillance consider it an opportunity to put on a show.
Recent Posts by tony schultz
August 19, 2007 at 8:12 pm · Filed under dance, photo shoot, designers, candice thompson, CANDICE, design, LOLAstretch
Posted by Candice Thompson
A week ago we did our first LOLAstretch Design Lab photo shoot at the skate park under the Manhattan Bridge. The shoot featured the new leotard that Erica Sabatini has designed as part of the Design Lab project. Our models were dancers Margot Martin of Carolina Ballet, Andrew Scordato of NYCB, Jaime Benjamin from the reality tv series The Search For the Next Pussycat Doll, and Connor Weigand. Kari Sharff, our most excellent photographer, gracefully captured shots and helped us navigate the sometimes dangerous terrain in the middle of a bunch of serious skateboarders. Shane Cisneros, celebrity stylist extraordinaire and fashion specialist for Getty Images, styled and held my hand as usual.
Erica has appropriately named the new design RIBellious, as it features a boat neck top, flattering rib panels that can be solid, mesh or open and a super low back. I am really excited to be able to launch this style as I feel Erica did an excellent job of pushing the design envelope while staying within the LOLAstretch aesthetic. Check out our myspace page, LOLAstretch.com or keep coming back here for new images of the leotard, slideshows of the behind-the-scenes images from our shoot and promotions as the day of the RIBellious launch approaches(September 28th).
We have a goal of raising $2500 for LUNGevity, a not-for-profit cancer research organization, and I am certain that will be a piece of cake with this eye-catching design. Please direct any questions or comments you might have to erica@lolastretch.com. We would love your feedback!
Margot and Andrew
Jaime…..I think she actually knows how to skate
Me trying to fix the helmet on Margot as Andrew and Connor look on…….I was obsessed with getting this sort of break-dancing headstand/headspin shot and needless to say, it was a misguided at best:-) but I thank Margot and Connor for being good sports!
The rebellious dancer/designer, Erica, in all her glory. And yes, we did spray paint those t-shirts in a fit of what could only be described as divine inspiration.
Random guy from skate park….confused about how he mistakenly stumbled upon a bunch of ballerinas but happy nonetheless.
Group shot, sorta like a group hug. Everyone involved was amazing and I think you can surmise from my maniacal laughing that good times were had.
To see more images from the RIBellious shoot Click Here.
Recent Posts by candice thompson
July 9, 2007 at 3:59 pm · Filed under dance, blogs, candice thompson, CANDICE, design, LOLAstretch, charity, blogging
Posted by Candice Thompson
Hey Wingers! I have been out of town and thus away from my computer and blogging in general, though I am about to conquer mobile phone blogging soon. But I have been working diligently on a new project for the last month that I am extremely excited about………The First Annual LOLAstretch Design Lab!
The LOLAstretch Design Lab is a twelve-week design challenge for one young designer to create a new leotard under my direction, with all profits going to charity!
LOLAstretch has selected Erica Sabatini, who is also a professional dancer with Carolina Ballet, to be the first young designer to participate in the LOLAstretch Design Lab. The program will guide Erica step-by-step through the process of designing a leotard through observing and working directly with me, as well as teach Erica about many aspects of running an emerging design business. Erica will catalogue her trials and tribulations, thoughts and insights in a twice-weekly blog at myspace.com/lolastretch. The LOLAstretch Design Lab will culminate in Erica’s new leotard being launched on LOLAstretch.com by the end of summer 2007.
Erica has chosen LUNGevity, a lung cancer research and support organization, to be the recipient of 100% her leotard’s profits. Recently, Erica lost her father to lung cancer, and she is a cancer survivor herself. LUNGevity Foundation is the nation’s leading private provider of research funding for lung cancer, the number one cancer killer. Partnering with the foremost physicians and research scientists in the world, the Foundation’s goal is to save the lives of the 213,000 Americans newly diagnosed with lung cancer each year.
LOLAstretch embraces this opportunity to facilitate and develop a unique design and support this cause that is near and dear to Erica’s heart. I hope you all enjoy reading her blog too!
Erica Sabatini on one of her first design challenge projects which required a trip to Home Depot for chalkboard paint.
Erica at the cutting table, working on the pattern for her leotard design, in the LOLAstretch design studio.
For more on LUNGevity, please visit www.LUNGevity.org.
To read Erica’s Blog, please visit www.myspace.com/lolastretch.
Recent Posts by candice thompson
May 24, 2007 at 11:41 pm · Filed under SLOAN, motorcycle, architecture, lincoln center, architects, diller scofidio + renfro, mobile, design, frank gehry, liz diller, interactive corp
Good news for us dancers… There will be a glass footbridge from our rehearsal studio in the Rose Building to the main part of Lincoln Center!
A slide showing how they stripped off the chunky facade of Alice Tully, extended the top part over to echo the shape of Broadway, and then capped it with glass.
The inside of Alice Tully is also getting a makeover. The new sculpted walls inside may look like plain wood, but it is actually a resin, topped with a veneer, so that they can actually make the wood GLOW.
There will also be a restaurant and some crazy-looking video projection stuff on 65th Street, which they are basically turning from a service street into a place that will lure people into Lincoln Center, show people what’s going on inside, and make it a destination… even if you don’t have a ticket to a show.
Gehry + BMW. Nice parking spot huh?
Recent Posts by kristin sloan
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