Lesley Dill

Lesley Dill is an artist/sculptor who's work has as its foundation dress, known for her sculptures of texted classical dresses. However inspired by her admiration of the poetry of Emily Dickenson, she was driven to create an opera. 'Divide Light' is Lesley Dill's opera based on Emily Dickinson's work and for it she created amazing costumes, costumes of poetry that scroll out from the body emanating the passion of the language.

"I wanted the costumes to be vivid word-pictures that were themselves events of reading. There was a costume for each of the three operatic voices that were tailored for the rhythms and harmonics of their voices. The other seven costumes are performative costumes that scroll out, pivot, release, pull out, revolve and are "actions" of reading using a number of actors for each performative costume." Lesley Dill