Last week Hyperallergic posted an excellent blog entitled, “If You Hate Your Children and Love Art, Dress Them Like This for Halloween.” Inside, they shared elaborate ideas from around the web for dressing your little ones up like Frida, Andy, Vincent, or the Guggenheim. After reading it, I realized that the Walker had already dressed dozens of children up (not even our own) in arty costumes. For October’s Free First Saturday, we took kids and their grown-ups on tours of Dance Works III: Merce Cunningham/Rei Kawakubo, an exhibition which showcases the costumes Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubuo created for Cunningham’s 1997 dance, Scenario. Afterwards, we led everybody in a movement activity to see how it felt to move when they had extra “lumps and bumps” on. I asked our prop and costume-maker extraordinaire, Frannie, to write up instructions for making your very own Cunningham costume:
Merce Cunningham Dancer Costume
Two piece of fabric:
1 – 60” long X 18” wide
1 – 18” long X 12” wide
Four pieces of Heat n Bond – iron on adhesive
2 – 18 inches long
2 – 12 inches long
Poly-fill
Iron
Lay large fabric piece flat on the floor. Take small fabric piece and lay in the center of larger piece. Use three of the hear n bond strips to iron three sides of the small fabric piece to the center of the large fabric piece. One side of the small fabric piece will be open – fill with poly-fill until the space resembles a big lump. Use the last heat n bond strip to seal in the poly-fill. Cut hole in the large fabric somewhere between the edge and the lump in the middle. Slide arm, leg or head through the hole and tie. OR, forgo the hole and tie around your hips, shoulder, arms or legs. Finished!
So go ahead! Revel in (your kid) having the most obscure costume on the block and let us know how it goes.
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