photo: Paulina Walenta
Red Ballet is an experimental fashion and performance project exploring collective emotion, human connection, and the expressive relationship between the body and clothing. The project investigates how garments can communicate emotional tension, intimacy, vulnerability, and unity through movement, interaction, and collective wearing.
The concept developed through research into contemporary dance, ballet, choreography, and performance as emotional forms of storytelling. A major influence was Pina Bausch and her emotionally charged interpretation of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, performed by her international troupe at the beginning of the pandemic. The raw physicality, tension, repetition, and emotional intensity present within the choreography became central to the development of the project’s visual and conceptual language. The work reflected how movement alone can communicate fear, vulnerability, unity, pressure, and emotional release without the need for words.
Further inspiration came from attending The Monocle, a contemporary dance performance exploring a secret lesbian club in 1930s Paris, where women could experience freedom and self-expression. The performance combined expressive choreography, music, and French song to create a powerful atmosphere of joy, fear, intimacy, and emotional complexity. This experience deepened the project’s interest in diversity, collective identity, and shared emotional experience beyond social categorisation.
At the centre of Red Ballet was the design and construction of a large-scale stretch garment intended to be worn simultaneously by multiple participants during a live performance. Through stretched, twisted, and tensioned fabric, the project explored how clothing can become a metaphor for emotional states and interpersonal relationships. Restriction, elasticity, pressure, and release were used symbolically to reflect the complexity of human emotion and the invisible emotional connections between people.
The project challenges social divisions by suggesting that emotion is a universal human experience that transcends gender, age, race, or cultural background. Rather than focusing on difference, Red Ballet presents emotion as a shared language capable of connecting people through vulnerability, empathy, and collective presence.
Creative Direction/Garment Designer - Jo Rudley
Photographers - Paulina Walenta, Amelia Clifton
