Dance and Fashion: Emerging Creative Synergies

Lena Hervé

In contemporary dance, costumes tend to be less flashy than in ballet productions, and they don’t often take center stage, both for aesthetic and financial reasons. Against the tide, collaborative dialogues have emerged between fashion designers and choreographers, creating pockets of creative freedom.

In 1924, Coco Chanel’s costumes for Le Train Bleu were a huge part of the production’s aesthetic appeal, with Ballet Russes dancers wearing short striped shorts and colorful jersey tank tops. In this ballet by Bronislava Nijinska, sportswear-inspired costumes highlighted the performers’ bodies with their modern lines. This marked the beginning of a love story between fashion and dance: torn between the weight of traditional techniques and a desire to shake things up, the two disciplines reinvented themselves together.

Across the 20^th century, many fashion designers have tried their hand at ballet costuming since then: Gianni Versace for Maurice Béjart, Issey Miyake for William Forsythe, or Rei Kawakubo for Merce Cunningham. If having a major designer do the costumes for a big production is no longer an exception, it remains rare in contemporary dance.

Could it be for financial reasons? Maybe. Sportswear, naked bodies, daily clothes… the general trend leans toward simplicity, relegating clothes to a simple decorative function. Conversely, a few choreographers are standing out by interrogating how costumes can become choreographic matter. The issue then is to find the right designer to team up with, as fashion often considers bodies as objects that have to adapt to the garments.

Flemish choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and designer Dries Van Noten have found a common language on several occasions – first for Drumming in 1998, then Rain in 2001. The Flemish designer has moved away from his usual flamboyance to fit the minimalist style of the choreographer: no showstopping pieces, but a few simple, minimalistic garments which highlight the gestures of the performers. The perfect fit of the clothes connects the performers with one another without erasing their individuality, thus subtly echoing the choreography – composed of repetitions and small variations. 

A similar dynamic can be observed between choreographer Némo Flouret and designer Satoshi Kondo (who now runs Issey Miyake): costumes are part of the piece’s overall design. For his Derniers Feux (2025), the Japanese fashion house devised a capsule collection composed of oversize clothes and burnt bits of knitted fabric that stick out. The stage design includes a box of costumes that performers dig through during performances, to embody mercurial characters and compose landscapes in a slow progression from black and white to color.

These collaborations happen above all thanks to shared affinities and creative processes. Far from a simple commission, these designers and choreographers work hand in hand in a long-term partnership. Satoshi Kondo and Némo Flouret corresponded for several years before working together on Derniers Feux: “We bounced ideas, images, films, and clothes back and forth off each other in a very informal way,” recalls the choreographer. “And eventually, we just started working together. It wasn’t a clear invitation but rather a conversation that kept going.”

This way of what Flouret calls “renewing approaches, of continuing to question ourselves through other disciplines,” seems welcome to the designers, who remain subjected to the frenetic pace of an industry driven by commercial interests, where fashion shows serve primarily as showcases for products. Némo Flouret understands this well. “It’s important for them to have a parallel laboratory that isn’t tied to commercialization,” he says. “It’s almost like a game compared to what they usually do: they have far fewer rules when creating a dance piece.”

Fashion is a universe often branded as shallow or superficial, and crossing over to arts and culture can be a challenge in terms of legitimacy. Few fashion houses manage to escape the rigidity of commercial logic in such a huge industry. “These days, when we talk about live performance, we would never include fashion shows. Yet they involve choreographers, visual artists, set designers, and musicians,” notes Amélie Zimmermann, who analyzes fashion under the handle @fashionquiche on social media. “The financial stakes are so high that there’s no room left for creativity.” Returning to more choreographed performances therefore allows for “a more dynamic fashion show, but also a way to stand out in an industry where competition is fierce,” says Zimmermann.

If some independent brands – like Miyake with Flouret, Forsythe, or Erwin Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures – have long found a balance between passion projects and more experimental ones, big fashion houses are now looking for new forms too. The partnership between Dior and Sharon Eyal for The Brutal Journey of the Heart (2019) is such an example, as was the brand’s spring-summer show that same year. Other major fashion industry brands – such as Chanel, which has been a major donor to the Paris Opera since 2023 – function more like patrons for the performing arts. These collaborations, which are certainly making headlines, are part of well-defined brand and financial strategies, raising questions about the growing privatization of funding for culture. Preserving creative freedom and fruitful collaborations comes with one condition: escaping the rules of the market.

Lena Hervé is a multifaceted artist and critic. She is particularly interested in how rituals and collective narratives are constructed and embedded in the body. Since 2021, she has been a regular contributor to the multidisciplinary cultural magazine Mouvement.

Derniers Feux
choreography: Némo Flouret
From June 12 to 14 at Grand Palais 
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900 Satellites 
Choreography: Némo Flouret
June 16th 2026 as a part of Camping festival in Bordeaux
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Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione
Choreography: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
June 19 to 21 at the Saitama Arts Theater, Japan
June 24 at the Aichi Arts Center, Japan
June 27 & 28 at theROHM Theatre Kyoto, Japan
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Rosas danst Rosas
Choreography: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
From June 22 to 24 at Aranya theater, China
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Rosas danst Rosas
Choreography: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
July 22th 2026 at Bolzano Danza, Italia 
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Rosas danst Rosas
Choreography: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
From September 10 to 17 at Chaillot Théâtre national de la danse
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MULTICAST Rosas danst Rosas
Choreography: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
From September 19 to 20 at Chaillot Théâtre national de la danse
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