Designer brings 'Last Empress' to Russia

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Designer brings 'Last Empress' to Russia

Posted : 2015-06-10 16:51

Updated : 2015-06-10 21:46

Costumes designed by Kim Hyun-sook and used for "The Wild Party" will be on display at the "Costumes at the Turn of the Century, 1990-2015" exhibition in Moscow, Russia, from June 15 to Aug. 1.
/ Courtesy of Kim Hyun-sook

By Chung Ah-young

The stage costumes epitomize the overall characteristics of the performers. In "The Last Empress," the blockbuster musical has more than 600 costumes and displays the graceful and dazzling beauty of the Korean traditional costumes dramatized with modern sensitivity. They were designed by Kim Hyun-sook, associate professor of costume design at the Department of Theatre & Dance at Ball State University in the United States.

She will bring her designs including the musical costumes to an exhibition titled "Costume at the Turn of the Century, 1990-2015" to Moscow, Russia, from June 15 to Aug. 1.

Her costume designs have been selected for inclusion in a catalog and for display at the exhibition, along with some 1,200 works out of more than 3,600 from around the world. The exhibition showcases costume design projects for theater, opera, dance, film, fashion and performing arts around the world and will include costume renderings, production photos, 3D costume installations, artistic images of costumes in other settings, as well as short performance videos.

"This exhibition is the first of its kind to showcase international costumes designs at a glance. As a costume artist who has been designing stage costumes over the last 30 years, it is a most meaningful event for me," Kim said in an email interview with The Korea Times.

A scene from the musical "The Last Empress"

Her designs have been widely recognized as bringing both "traditional Korean and universal flavors" to the international stage. "To help Korean stage costumes gain more presence in the world, designers should pursue universality as well as their unique flavors," she said.

As this year marks the 20th anniversary of the musical's debut, it will be a valuable opportunity to highlight the costumes for The Last Empress, Kim said. The musical tells the story of Empress Myeongseong in the middle of the late 19th century, who was killed in 1895 by Japanese assassins.

Kim said that she wanted to interpret her traditional styles in a modern context. "My work in costume design is, as usual, an endless endeavor to create new styles in our contemporary theater world. I have enthusiasm to search for new dynamic forms of stage costumes in our present theater space," Kim said.

She researched traditional materials and turned them into a new expression -- not for a historical reprint but for a creative performance in the "here and now."

She recomposed the lines and shapes which exaggerated the established pattern of form, transformation of senses of mass and volume, and a new combination of colors as well as cubic substitution of texture and open utilization of fabric materials.

"Through these methods, I have made a sincere attempt to modernize traditional styles in a purposeful and selective way to fit in the whole production style. In this context, my design of The Last Empress aimed at refined court costumes dramatized with modern sensitivity by means of exaggerated forms and silhouette as much as rich, solemn colors and deep, heavy texture," she said.

Not only "The Last Empress" costumes but also her other designs for Andrew Lippa's "The Wild Party," which premiered on Sept. 27, 2007, will be displayed at the exhibition.

He designs features the dark, decadent, very jazzy, and sexual atmosphere with the deep colors and the modern -patterned texture.

Also, her design productions titled "The God of North" (in black), "The God of South" (in red), and "The God of East" (in blue), which were not realized yet, were also included in the event. The works were submitted to "Proposal of Costume Design for the 2002 World Cup Opening" in 2000. "I always enjoy fusing designs to mix and match the Western and Asian elements together, I stylized a form of Elizabethan ruff, Korean traditional pattern-motif, Korean ancient boots and belt items with Western-looking armor pieces," she said.

chungay@ktimes.com