Gender shackles of fashion
Who decides what’s okay for men and women to wear?
This was the question being grappled with intensively throughout the Rerouted Dance Theatre production Clothes Maketh (Wo)Man.
Three lone figures – covered from the head down in glossy, black white and blue cardboard that revealed only their legs strapped into heels – introduce the audience to the production at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.
As the music starts, the figures move around in perfect sequence, resembling fashion runway models, before they begin acting out frustrated movements as their perfectly orchestrated walks begin to unravel.
Heels are thrown off and the figures unwrap each other, revealing two women and, unexpectedly a man.
The play intertwines dance and performance art to wrestle with issues surrounding societal objectification of women’s bodies.
Tegan Peacock, one of the cast members, said the play was inspired by “rules” around clothes, which can act as an outlet for personal expression or as mental a prison, enforcing parameters on physical bodies.
“When we started out, we looked at how fashion conglomerates influence day-today fashion and it sort of just narrowed down to ideas around constructs of gender and fashion.
“A classic example is high heels. There’s that empowering confidence element that they bring – posture and longerlooking legs – but, at the same time, they’re crippling because you can’t run in them and they don’t have good long-term physical effects on women’s bodies,” Peacock said.
She said the production’s main aim was to question some of the implications of fashion, particularly those concerning gender relations.
Clothes Maketh (Wo)Man is on again tonight at the National Arts Festival.