First Day of Shadowing

Today was my first day shadowing in the dance costume shop on campus. I showed up and was happy to see Sister Knight there with some of her team all working on projects. Sister Knight was kind enough to inform her team that I would be joining them for the day, shadowing, observing, and asking questions about what was going on.

To start, I observed different members of the department team. I watched them glue on individual rhinestones to a costume, they were copying other costumes that already had rhinestones on them. They used this cool little tool that was a pen with beeswax on the end to grab the rhinestone and set it on top of the glue dot. 

I then watched as one of the students was re-tacking tulle to the bottom of a dress. She was doing it by hand so as to have better accuracy and control than trying to use a machine.

Something I learned this day from watching Sister Knight and her team was that they typically have to fix or mend costumes more often than not. Especially when they are repurposing costumes that were used previously, they might have pieces that were stepped on and ripped the seam, or as the dancer was wearing the costume the seams started to burst. But it is very useful of them that they do repurpose costumes so they don't have to make new ones from scratch for every different performance.

On this day I was also able to check out the costume shop storage they have. They call it the dungeon because it is in a dark sealed off room. Interestingly enough, it is located in the MC, so anytime they want to take close out or store them in the dungeon they have to walk it outside from the Hart over to the MC.

The dungeon has electric rolling shelves with labels on each shelf for organization. They sort them by type of dance or costume, for example contemporary, world, or "one of a kind".

 In this space they also have a separate closet space for all the shoes they have available. Each shoe is individually marked with the size and in it's own bin. It was really cool to see all the old costumes stored there. Claire who is the assistant showed me a few costumes in the storage that had been modified or used for different performances and it was very interesting to see what they can do with what they have.

An interesting tool they use in the dance costume department that I had never seen before was this electric rotary cutter. I'm used to seeing the rotary cutters you just roll by hand to cut off extra fabric or hems, but this tool was a little different. It was plugged in with a long chord and when turned on, has a high speed blade that you stick the fabric in-between and it cuts the fabric off super fast. I watched Sister Knight use it on the hem of a dress, and the process when so much quicker than if she had been using a manual rotary cutter.

Overall, it was a very good day of learning and discovering new things. I was able to speak with different team members and Sister Knight to get to know them a little better and prepare to work with them the rest of the semester. It has been fun seeing the differences between costuming and other forms of apparel that I'm more familiar with. I look forward to learning more.