California Apparel News

During an intimate gathering at COS DTLA, L.A. Dance Project Artistic Director Benjamin Millepied and Principal Dancer Janie Taylor discussed how she created costumes, using the brand's garments, for a piece unveiled during the L.A. Dances festival. The conversation, led by the senior West Coast editor for Vanity Fair, Britt Hennemuth included a viewing of video footage from “Adagio in B Minor,” a world-premiere piece choreographed by Taylor that uses Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music of the same name.

"There is a level of sophistication in this piece that is really incredible,” Millepied explained. “It's only a six-minute duet but I hope more will come of it.”

Partnering with fellow L.A. Dance Project Principal Dancer David Adrian Freeland Jr., Taylor explained that she was inspired by the challenge of the perfect synchronization of movement required when dancing a duet.

“I thought ‘What if the dance contest from [the film] “Pulp Fiction” and traditional court dancing were one dance? What would that be like?’,” Taylor revealed. “I took older Viennese waltzing grips and tried to combine them with other styles of dance on the rest of the body."

For the piece, COS provided garments to serve as the costumes and afforded creative freedom to Taylor. Following her 2014 retirement from New York City Ballet, Taylor began designing costumes, according to a biography listed for the Los Angeles-based Colburn School, where she is a teacher.

"Everyone at COS was really giving me the freedom to do whatever I wanted,” she said. “Obviously, I was going to use their clothing, but they were super open to me cutting them up, painting them or doing anything I wanted to do, which was really helpful for me.”

While Taylor was able to use the apparel to create garments that would reflect her vision, the original COS pieces provided a costume foundation that was easy to build upon for a work of dance.

“A lot of the clothing, on its own, lent itself to dancing and movement already. What David was wearing—a T-shirt and pants—he was able to dance in them,” she said. “I had on a short skirt, which was [originally] a longer skirt. For this dance, I wanted all the steps to show and I wanted our legs more visible, so we cut that skirt shorter. They gave me the freedom to throw all that color on the clothing.”

As part of L.A. Dances, “Adagio in B Minor” is one of 13 dance pieces that will be performed during festival, which will run until Nov. 24 at the L.A. Dance Project studio in downtown Los Angeles. The work is also one of six world premiere pieces that have been unveiled during the event.