Installation and dance performance
A study of beauty
My fascination with this particular project, originated when I first discovered that it would provide an opportunity to represent, through design, the possibility of encountering ‘beauty’. Unlike designing for a performance, where the potential beauty, or moral teaching, within the narrative lies beneath the surface, this project would directly address the universal question – which has baffled mankind since the beginning of human existence – what is ‘beauty’?
This project would focus on the exploration of ‘beauty’ presented in the form of an installation/museum environment, where the audience could independently move around and “reflect on their own personal ideal of beauty”. Designed and produced for ‘Nottingham College’, I would be working as the set designer alongside a director, costume designer, four theatre technicians, and ten dancers (students) aged from eighteen to twenty-six, with each of the dancers required to perform a solo dance within the performance space. Throughout the project, I was tasked to organise their own design ideas within the set, and communicate with them concerning their individual performances. In order to maintain regular contact with the group, the director arranged, at the beginning of the term, that we would meet weekly during the lead up to the final production week.
emma whitehouse-bird 