Translating
Dance Movement
into
Digital Fashion Design
MIMI
Mimi is an artistically complex dancer who has been trained in the basics of belly dancing and Arabic dance movement techniques. The sensuality and fluidity in her body movements marked the first stage in the exploration process, and consequently introduced the study to the world of movement within the context of Middle Eastern dance cultures.
WENDY OKOLI
Wendy is an experienced afro dance practitioner based in the North West of England. Her deep physical vocabulary, rooted in West African and Western dance , drives the main movement capture phase of the project. Her reading of her own freeze captures directly informed the cut, volume and surface patterns of the final garment, making her a co-author of its visual language.
NSAKA SANDRINE NGANGA
Music producer, digital fashion researcher and French-Congolese creative practitioner leading the project. Her work sits at the intersection of movement, sound and digital garment design, with a broader research interest in decolonising digital fashion practice, reclaiming cultural knowledge systems through technology, and exploring how the body can become the primary tool of design rather than its subject
What if the moving body was the first tool of fashion design ?
Body as Pattern :
Translating Dance Movement into Digital Fashion Design is a transdisciplinary project developed through the collaboration between dancers and a digital fashion designer researcher.
The project explores how movement can become a starting point for designing garments. Through dance sessions, gestures, rhythm and body dynamics are observed and translated into lines, shapes and garment structures.
Instead of beginning with traditional pattern making, the process starts with the moving body. Body movement becomes designs.
By bringing dance and digital fashion together, the project creates a space for experimentation where choreography and clothing influence one another. It is an exploration of how the body can generate form, and how movement can become design.
Disciplines involved
Dance / Movement Practice
Movement exploration is led through two distinct collaborative phases. Mimi, a multi-style dancer rooted in belly dance traditions, opened the first exploratory session. Wendy, an experienced afro dance practitioner, leads the main movement capture sessions, bringing a deep physical vocabulary rooted in West African and Ndombolo dance traditions.
Digital Fashion Design
Sandrine Nganga translates movement observations into digital fashion concepts. Lines, rhythms and body dynamics extracted from the dance sessions inform the development of experimental garment forms.
Music Production
Original sound environments produced by Sandrine guide each movement session. The music shapes the energy, tempo and atmosphere, influencing how the body responds and moves.
Video Documentation
Each session is recorded to capture the complexity of movement. The footage becomes a key material for analysing gestures, identifying movement patterns and informing the design process.
Artistic Research
The project operates as a practice led artistic research, bringing together dance, music and digital fashion design to explore how movement can generate new approaches to garment creation.