http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/arts/design/dance-fashion-at-fit-explores-a-magical-interweave.html 2014-10-03 01:27:20 ‘Dance & Fashion,’ at F.I.T., Explores a Magical Interweave “Dance & Fashion,” an exhibition at the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, charts the intersection of the two art forms, from the 1830s through the modern-dance era. === The most unusual thing about “ As someone better versed in the “dance” part of “Dance & Fashion,” I’m used to looking at costumes for how they move through space, how they accent the shape, or react to the motion, of a dancer’s body. How strange, then, to see sartorial creatures that I’d witnessed in action — Martha Graham’s tubular sheath from “Lamentation,” Norma Kamali’s billowing stripes for Twyla Tharp’s “In the Upper Room” — fitted neatly onto blank-faced mannequins, not going anywhere. That imposing stillness is both a draw and a drawback of “Dance & Fashion.” Organized by the museum’s director, the fashion historian Valerie Steele, the exhibition charts the intersections of “two embodied art forms,” as they’re aptly publicized, over more than 175 years. (Ms. Steele limited the scope to “ballet and modern,” with a few exceptions. New York City Ballet is well represented.) The results are revelatory in many respects: historically rich, visually exquisite. But for a show about embodied art, “Dance & Fashion” feels eerily disembodied. Bordering the gallery on four multitiered platforms designed by the architect Kim Ackert, the items follow a loose chronology, from 19th- through 21st-century ballet, then back in time through the history of modern dance, a term restricted mostly to heavy hitters like Graham, Alvin Ailey and Merce Cunningham. The oldest and the most futuristic costumes stand at opposite poles: At one end, encased in glass, an opulent dress (pink satin, black lace) worn by the Austrian ballerina Fanny Elssler in 1836; at the other, Iris van Herpen’s singular plastic frock, with its jagged protrusions and matching knee-high point shoes, for Benjamin Millepied’s 2013 “ The layout keeps categories in flux, with juxtapositions revealing how dance and fashion have mirrored, challenged and quoted each other over time. Noritaka Tatehana’s surreal, elongated point shoes for Lady Gaga — 18-inch platforms that she donned in her 2011 Yet, for all these treasures, “Dance & Fashion” somehow lacks the vitality of its subjects. Maybe it’s the spatial configuration — all of those mannequins crowded to the edges of the room, regarding you more frontally than three-dimensionally, as if it were your turn to be watched — or the shortage of moving images. A little bit of video, interspersed among the clothes, could go a long way toward enlivening the space and honoring the most distinctive dimension of fashion for dance, which is how it behaves in motion. Anyone who hasn’t seen “Neverwhere,” for instance, would not know how Ms. van Herpen’s costumes glisten and audibly crackle when they move. It’s one thing to read a label about Judith Jamison’s rippling white skirt in Ailey’s “Cry.” It would be another to see, side by side with the actual garment, just how she makes it ripple. Which is not to overlook the attempts at something similar. Upstairs, in the museum lobby, engaging short films chronicle the sketchbook-to-stage complexity of dance-couture collaborations. In the hallway outside the main gallery, a silent video strings together brief excerpts from the dances whose costumes appear in the exhibition. Portraits of the Paris Opera Ballet dancers Aurélie Dupont and Jérémie Bélingard by the French photographer Anne Deniau (a.k.a. Ann Ray) capture the stories that surface when fabric meets flesh. Wendy Whelan, principal of principals at City Ballet, wafts across one wall in footage from “