Alec Gutteridge

This design was formulated for a proposed ballet adaptation of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses for the character of Eurydice.

The adaptation of Ovid’s classic tale, centres on a description of Eurydice’s internality. Her experience of death from her subjective perspective. The internal process’ of a character before which had been rendered archetypal – as lover or object of love. The Adaptation to Ballet required of the costume to express a sense of this internality, to depict the process of becoming which Eurydice undergoes. Taking inspiration from the title and Ancient Greek notions of tragedy Eurydice wears a long silken length which changes from wedding gown, to death shroud before subsuming her into a suspended chrysalis after her death, as though she is undergoing her own metamorphoses. She emerges afterwards twirling the lengths of silk which had been her cocoon, the fates having cut her down once again, so that she may attempt to gather together the aspects of her person which in her death had “fallen like rain” and attempt that steep ascent into life.