Over the last month and a half, I have been working on a new project, Red Silk Project. Now that it is complete, it is time to talk about it here.
The Red Silk Project is a journey, a journey in celebration of creation, beauty, and collaboration. It is meant to be a procession, a spiritual and exotic tribute both to the Temple and what it symbolizes as well as the people and the desert. This year, the procession will take place at sunset, Friday, September 4, 2009, the day before the burn from deep end to the temple, a three mile dance and pilgrimage. Five dancers dressed in red and black silks, lace, and headdresses travel to the horizon.
This project is about the social interactions between the “audience” and the “performers”, but it is also a color study, a study in the placement of characters, framing, music and the interaction between the procession as an entity within its environment. It is entitled “red silk” but only one main character will be in red, as the leader of the group, she personifies the goddess, rich, embracing, and sensual as the other dancers embrace her being, interact with the audience and invite their response through their movements, their emotions, and their dance.
All designs were organically made, taking into the concept of working with the multiple mediums and various techniques of fabric manipulation, papier mache, and construction. Every artists had a very different background as well as style which gave life and a different spirit to each of their headdresses. The form was very important, the base of each piece started with a three dimensional study of shape, dimension, and volume and to build on top of that over weeks time.
The fashion style is a mix between science fiction of Aeon Flux and the dark romanticism of Luis Royo. Taking into the background of the colors of the desert, the luminance of the sunset, warm and dark tones are placed into it. A natural fluctuation of the fabrics is visible from afar, as well as the definite and explicit contours and the volumes of the base elements of the headpieces and the outfits close by. Each element embraces opposites – the outside and the inside, the rigid and the fluid, the richness of the reds and the formality of the blacks.
I was first inspired to design by my first trip to the desert. Not only is this project intended for Burning Man, the process is also important. It took over a month long preparation of local artists, including jewelry designer Josie Adele, mask expert Jesse Kauppila, make up artist Aurora Jimenez, as well as the creative input of model Anat Elektrik.
See more images from the procession below:
