Got some costumes you inherited from your teacher that don’t fit quite well?
Love vintage costumes but need help with altering them?
Today I’m super excited to introduce to you a belly dance costume alteration expert, Chani!
As you’ll see in this post, she is excellent at taking an old costume and putting new life into it. And her work is seamless!!
She has offered to write for Sparkly Belly from time to time, sharing her projects, knowledge and tips with us. I’m thrilled!!
So in this post, get to know Chani, and have a look at some of her work. Enjoy!
Meet Chani!
Greetings, Sparkly Belly’ers! I’d like to introduce myself and give you a little backstory on me in dance and sewing, in addition to what I am bringing to Mao’s wonderful offerings.
I came to costuming from the opposite end from Mao: instead of giving you patterns, tips, techniques, and design concepts for new costumes, I will be providing ideas, techniques, and concepts for working with existing costumes.
I have always loved all things vintage, from old houses, old household items, even old sewing patterns, to vintage fashion. I worked at an NYC store named Screaming Mimi’s, originally as a stitcher, repairing and modifying vintage garments, and ended up as store manager – I have been playing with vintage garments for a long, long time.
So for me, it was natural to love old costumes. There is something uniquely special about having a costume worn by a mentor, or dancer you admire, and refreshing it to dance in yourself. It is as if that costume helps you ‘channel’ the prior owner when you perform in it.
I don’t recall learning to sew; I do recall learning to dance. My sister, four years older than me, was taking a weekly dance class, which I would sit and watch. One day my mom left me watching and ran off to do an errand, coming back to find I had joined the class. I was three years old. Three weeks later, my sister quit.
By five I had declared my intention of becoming a professional ballerina, which took me to NYC at 16 to finish high school and study with Balanchine ballerina Melissa Hayden. By 20, not yet hired by a company, I decided it was time to ‘hang up the point shoes,’ and I quit all forms of dance. It took a while, but I did come back to dance in every other form: jazz, modern, salsa, and eventually I discovered bellydance. I have studied tribal, fusion, AmCab, and oriental, and have settled on traditional, fully improvised oriental style as the match for me.
Typical of my personality, I do not do things halfway. I discovered my love of this form of dance, and continue to study it as a dance form, learn about its history, its traditions in its home country (since I do traditional oriental, for me the birthplace of this form of the dance is Egypt), and am studying the language. I have been to Egypt and Turkey, and look forward to going back. All of this translates to my love of the costume; while I enjoy and own modern costumes, I get much pleasure out of resurrecting older costumes, some of them from the 70s.
I am presenting here, in this initial introduction, some projects I have already completed, both adding to new costumes as they felt “half-made” to me, and reworking costumes that I bought from other dancers (mostly as they did not fit me properly).
In the future, I will be presenting new projects as I tackle them, taking you along with me as I start any deconstruction, problem-solving, and sometimes, even figuring out what I will do with a particular costume. (I am thinking of one costume in particular, that had such lofty wonderful lineage – but it was a very worn, much loved, and very dated-looking costume. I didn’t even know where or how to begin – I just knew it needed a lot of work. It was in its deconstruction that I discovered what I wanted it to look like.)
Hopefully, by showing you what I have chosen to do with my costumes, I will inspire you to revisit that costume you love that just isn’t right for you, or doesn’t fit well, or just seems dated, bringing ideas of techniques to refresh your own costumes.
Eventually, we will build a library of techniques; supplies and tools; materials and sources.
I would also like to make myself available to you for technique questions, ideas, suggestions, etc. My email is chani@sparklybelly.com; feel free to reach out with questions! I look forward to working with you as you turn your existing costume collection into something unique to you. After all, one of the best gifts of this dance is it should be unique to you, in every way – including your costumes.
Best to all,
Chani
Got inspired by Chani’s work? 🙂
Next week we have Chani’s Turquoise costume upgrade project where she shows you how she extended a beaded bra cup (with a scallop edge).
If you’re curious, sign up for the Sparkly Belly newsletter so you won’t miss it!
Thanks for reading, and keep sparkling!
P.S. Pin this image on your next project board 🙂
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