Florentine Adventures

I know it has been a long time since I've posted anything, so hopefully this super long post will make up for that!

I recently attended Costume Colloquium II Dress for Dance in Florence Italy. It was a fantastic opportunity to meet with many like minded people from all over the world andhear their thoughts on 'dress for dance' and how that could be interpretted. The conference went from Nov 4-7, including a half day trip to Siena.

Coinciding with this, my classmates and lecturers and I put on an exhibition of Australian dance costumes, mostly the work of designer Kritstian Frederikson (KF), and his work with Opera Australia, the Australian Ballet Company, and Sydney Dance Company. We hauled 31 costumes, mannequins, stands, signs, and an emergency kit of extra things accross the globe, and put on a fantastic display in the Palazzo Medici Ricardi for the duration of the conference.Our exhibition matched a presentation the head of costume, Fiona Reilly, was giving as part of the conference, on the work of KF. Our exhibition was up from Nov 3-10.

Since then, I have travelled Italy (Venice and Rome specifically) having a bit of a holiday, and looking at costumes along the way. In Venice, my travelling friend Georgiana and I found a museum that had real clothing from the early to mid 1700s, (mens, womens and childrens), and some corsets, socks and gloves for good measure. Unfortunately, the clothing is all unable to be photographed, and the museum was so small they didn't even have a book we could purchase to remember the clothing!!

In Rome, we were mostly being tourists, and enjoying scrutinising the 'Roman Soldier' costumes that were all over the place for tourist pleasure. It was laughable in comparison to the brilliant work recently completed by the Props students back at NIDA, and the guys wearing the costumes were charging 4E per photograph, so they certainly could have afforded decent costumes if they were interested!

I am now in London, settling in for a few days before I start my internship at Angels costume workroom in Hendon. Hopefully I find more permanent accommodation before too long, I don't think I'm cut out for surviving in a hostel!!

Unfortunately I don't have any photos to upload, they are all still on my camera. It's a bit work in progress, hopefully I'll settle into it soon. And hopefully it wont be so long between updates again!

Costume Colloquium II

Hey... I've just started 3 months overseas!!! I'm in Florence, Italy at the moment, setting up an exhibition of Australian dance costumes to coincide with the costume colloquium conference, and will soon be heading to London to start an 8 week internship at Angels Costumes. I will write more when I can, but wanted to let you all know how much I'm loving Florence, even finding the most amazing fabric store Casa dei Tessuti in all my wanderings. I love the rich culture of such an amazing reneissance city, the language, and especially the food!!

About to go attend an evening exhibition as part of the conference, so I must run... I promise to upload photos of Florence, my exhibition, and all related costume and culture as soon as possible. Much love.