Costume as part of stage action. Materiality, culture, body

Donatella Barbieri"s book seeks to fill the gap in the vast building of literature on performing arts, in which the stories of the stage costume is given a marginal place. The author turns to different types of performive practices: dance, ballet, cabaret, circus at the beginning of the 20th century, theater of different eras - from antiquity to modernity. The focus of Barbieri"s attention is the development of a stage costume, which simultaneously represents the material principle and the sphere of high ideas, the world of fashion and bodily practices of different historical periods. For a more accurate and detailed description of the various functions of the stage costume, the author actively uses interdisciplinary approaches: she writes about the first stage practices from the perspective of historical anthropology, about ballet and circus costumes - through the prism of feminist and post -colonial theories. And in the study of the specifics of the performance of the avant -garde, the role of the costume in the productions of the early XX century and the performances of our time, Barbieri uses the phenomenological approach. In the book, the co -author of the costume artist Melissa Tramingham acts, she belongs to the fifth chapter, where the costume of the Art Nouveau era is considered from the point of view of modern studies of empathy. Donatella Barbieri is a senior researcher and teacher at the London Fashion College