Theater, Dance & Media welcomes Machine Dazzle for a master class on Friday, April 12 at 11am-4pm, at 29 Garden Street (enter on Chauncy Street). Lunch will be provided. Registration required (scroll down/at bottom).

In his master class, Designing Transformative Objects, Machine Dazzle provides insight and context into the multi-year creative development process that culminated in Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, the epic 24-hour long radical re-framing of American History told through 246 songs. Dazzle will challenge you to reimagine how costumes, props and scenic elements play an active, vital role in the storytelling process. How can a costume be transformed into a physical object, or a scenic element become a wearable piece of art? Participants will be challenged to develop a design concept on the theme of the unexpected element of surprise. At the end of the session, participants will share their ideas, present two-dimensional models of their design, and brainstorm with Machine Dazzle on how their concepts could be fully realized.

About Machine Dazzle

Since 1994, Machine Dazzle has been dazzling stages with costumes, sets and performances across New York City, America and abroad. In recent years, Dazzle has made a name for himself designing intricate, unconventional wearable art pieces. Dazzle often refers to himself as an artist playing the role of costume designer. His work abandons the confines of theatrical convention; materials often are transformed into characters themselves, offering the narrative an intricate subtext. Over the course of 8 years working on A 24-Decade History of Popular Music with Taylor Mac, Dazzle has created a landscape for the work to live in-- visuals that simultaneously depict the bloody history on our backs and the sweeping idealism that defines the American spirit.

Former and current collaborators include Justin Vivian Bond, Julie Atlas Muz, Chris Tanner and Soomi Kim, among many others. For his design and conception of the costumes designed for Taylor Mac's A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, Dazzle is the co-recipient of the 2017 Bessie Award for Outstanding Visual Design and was awarded a Henry Hewes Design Award by The American Theatre Wing in 2017. In 2018, Machine Dazzle served as the Grand Marshal of the 45th Annual Village Halloween Parade in New York City.