I was recently commissioned to re-make the costumes I designed for Trisha Brown's "O Zlozony / O Composite" by the Pennsylvania Ballet as part of their Spring season Balanchine and beyond. Martha Chamberlain, a former dancer with the PA Ballet and now a costumer, made the pants and shorts for the piece. The concept was padded corsets, supportive, protective and evocative of fencing attire.
Aaron Anker
The original piece was commissioned by the Paris Opera Ballet in 2004.
It was a delight to work with the talented dancers and costume shop in Philadelphia to create these costumes.
Lillian di Piazza
It is the sole ballet that Brown created during her 50 yr career. to quote Susan Rosenberg from her program essay-
"Performed in all-white costumes designed by Elizabeth Cannon, whose stitching and armbands recall the attire used in the aristocratic art of fencing (considered a source for ballet's technical vocabulary), the choreography joins recognizable ballet moves- pirouettes, expansive leaps through space, and graceful port de bras- with Brown's vocabulary of rapid undulation of the spine, head and limbs, the use of simple walking, and the creation of linear as well as asymmetrical physical geometries"
Lillian Di Piazza
Laurie Anderson composed the music with text from Czeslaw Milosz's poem "Ode to a bird", Vija Celmins did the set design of a starry night sky, and Jennifer Tipton designed the lighting.
It was a truly magical time creating the original in the Palais Garnier in Paris, and wonderful to revive it here in Philadelphia. The piece was performed June 9-12, 2016.