Manuela needed a costume for Raks Spooki, New England’s largest and longest running gothic belly dance festival, featuring dancers from the homelands of HP Lovecraft, Stephen King and Edgar Allen Poe.

The costume is actually two piece and I used acrylics in three different painting sessions to get a modulated grayscale going so as to lend an extra dimensionality to the bones. In addition, every corpse needs some worms! In the pictures they are in her hands. They are 18″ dowel rods painted black, with two ping pong balls hot glued for the eyes. Some light flowing material cut into strips was fed through an eye hook in the top and then a brightly colored piece of a boa was hot glued in between the eyes for an upstanding and outstanding hairdo. Manuela will be doing  a routine where she will be using the worms to dance and fly through the air. I love puppets!

For those who are interested in attending some otherworld performances:

“Raks Spooki IV” A Gothic Belly Dance Event  Sun Nov. 15th, 7pm

The Regent Theatre, 7 Medford St. , Arlington , MA

Tags: costume, costume construction, performance, puppets