We are Uzma Kazi and Samantha Jackson from Liverpool Instutue of Performing Arts, we are currently in the final year of BA (Hons) Theatre and Perforamnce Design.

It has been a great experience to work with the team of transition. Working with the Artistic Director, Bisakha Sarker, has opened up our creative approach to projects. She has been open to ideas and made the process a very easy, comfortable and enjoyable journey, opening up many doors for us along the way, which included working with Kali Dass, a freelance choreographer, as well as with Jasmine….from Random Dance Company. Their input has been essential and driven our ideas further.
It has been a joy to design and make the costumes for both groups of dancers. Not only has it allowed us to creatively apply our skills and knowledge artistically, but through our research process, we too, have had the opportunity to question what exactly out heritage is.

Spirit of Liverpool: Friday 7th March 2008 2pm

‘The Spirit of Liverpool’ is about the combination of different cultures, arriving in Liverpool over the past 800 years, and we wanted to reflect this in the costumes. It was nice working with dancers bringing their own cultural practices to the piece, and also combining to learn new skills. Each costume has a colour and pattern that represents a culture or society which merge together as colours and shapes combine, which shows the cultural exchange beautifully through dance. The dancers had to put up the different concepts thrown at them, and we would like to thank them for making it an enjoyable and fun process.

Gen(H)ome: Saturday 8th March 2008 2pm

The unravelling of the ideas for the Gen(H)ome piece moved on from the very classical and traditional costumes, to a more fresh and contemporary feel. We came up with the concept that although everyone maybe uniform in some sense, each person is unique in their own way, whether that be through eye colour, fingerprints or even how differently we act to the five senses. The costumes we present here convey just this message. We came to use the Indonesian batik technique experimenting with a range of colours which were very similar to the images of cells and DNA we came cross in our research. We attended many rehearsals and were taken aback by all the hard work and effort put in by all the children of the community dance groups, watching them come together to mix and share their heritage through dance.

With thanks to:
Ashley Shairp, Joe Stathers-Tracey, Bisakha Sarker, Kali Dass and Eimear Kavanagh, Jasmine and Kate from Random Dance Company, Debbie Wright, Sue Lancaster and Mira Gokul.
Also, a very special thank you to the performers of ‘The Spirit of Liverpool’ and to all the children that took part in the Gen(H)ome piece, from The Greenhouse Project and Southport YMCA.
The whole team will join us in saying a big thank you to LIPA and Mike Brown for organising the funding for the costumes.