Description
My idea for sustained investigation number 5 was to incorporate my love for drawing clothing, character making, and the music I sing in Choir. For this project, I started out by sketching different costumes for the soloists in projects I’ve done where the choristers didn’t wear their performance/ rehearsal uniforms. When we don’t have to wear them, we are given some freedom to choose what we wear on stage with a few restrictions. Typically, it’s dressing professionally, which means no crop tops, tank tops, spaghetti straps, sweats, or tennis shoes. Sometimes, if there is a soloist, they will get to wear an accessory or a different article of clothing than everyone else. I wanted to explore what the soloists might wear by creating something extravagant and more opera-like for the small music production we did of The Language of the Birds with Persian composer Sahba Aminikia.
The first piece I designed is for the peacock solo. I didn’t want to draw a bird costume; I wanted to lean more into what a soloist would wear for a non-choreographed concert. To do this, I made the base of the dress bright blue, and then a drape over the bottom half of the dress that resembles how peacock feathers drape over a real peacock. Then, I added the rest of the details peacocks have circling the waist of the dress, like the circular patterns, and then the black and white feathers. I made her pose with her arms above her head to show the personality of the character, proud yet vain. This was such a fun project for me because I really enjoyed creating a costume for a soloist and only having a few lines of song as the inspiration.
