In Smithereens : The Costume Remains of Lea Anderson's Stage by Mary Kate Connolly

What happens to contemporary dance costumes?when the show is over and their surrounding?legacy slips from view? How might costumes be?mobilised towards representational repair, post-performance? Located within Lea Anderson's?choreographic archive, this book charts a series of?hands-on interventions with the fabric remains of?her companies The Cholmondeleys and The?Featherstonehaughs. Centred on practices of?Disintegration, Preservation, Transaction and?Display, they offer provocative modes of engaging?with the physical leftovers of performance, the?degrading of memory and legacy around pre-digital theatre work, and the temporal material transitions of artefacts enduring outside of?traditional museological contexts. How might we regard these mercurial items? As?precious relics to be protected in museum?holdings, ghostly harbingers of residual?performance histories, or inconvenient detritus??The book travels from props-makers' studios to?auction houses and galleries, incorporating film-making, artefact handling and curation along the?way, in lively dialogue with perspectives from?dance history, material culture, sociology and?performance studies. The choreographic archive is?envisioned as repository of the awkward, scattered?remains of legacy blown apart into fragments.?Smithereens, which can, if we allow them, demand?an alternative after-life that disrupts the vanishing?inflicted on these costumes and the companies?who danced in them.
Binding: Hardback