The Makings of an X-Men Dark Phoenix Performance
From Fan Fusion in St. Paul MN, 2018.
When I was living with my dad, one thing we really enjoyed doing together was watching Marvel movies. My favorite part was listening to his side talk on all of the backstory and interesting facts about the characters he learned from reading the comics as a child. I was listening to comics history while enjoying a really cool modern movie! I latched on to Jean Grey from the X-Men series right away. She was smart, very powerful, and kind. When the 3rd movie came out, I was entranced by her transformation. I made the Phoenix cosplay not too long after my dad and I saw the movie together, and wore it to multiple comic cons in Michigan and Minnesota. It's one of my favorite cosplays.
When Lisa Jean proposed the Heroes and Villains belly dance show, it didn't take me long to remember the beautiful red trench coat that hung in my closet, unworn, for the last 5 years. Because the cosplay doesn't get recognized as much anymore, I don't wear it to cons as often as I used to (I was also VERY tired of being called Melisandre…). I knew that the other dancers in this show would recognize and appreciate her, so I submitted my application with her as my character.
My next step, after getting accepted to perform in the show, was planning out the video. I had a lot of ideas in my head of re-creating scenes from the movie X-Men: The Last Stand. Her scene with Scott Summers, her disappearing into the woods, her sitting in a chair in her childhood home before her scene with Professor Xavier. I also wanted a costume change, because part of my trench coat is a corset. I cannot belly dance in a corset.
I determined I would not be able to completely re-create the scenes I wanted, but I did give odes to them in my performance.
The first filming day was the full cosplay. We went to a local park that I have filmed at in the past and trudged along an empty snowy trail until we found some trees that we liked. The first obstacle we ran into was my hands getting very cold while dancing with the fans, but it wasn't long after that when the first of 3 cross-country skiers skated past! We quickly grabbed all of our gear and cleared the path for each of them. The final straw for filming was when the rest of my body started getting cold. We had gotten a few minutes of dancing with fans, Isis-wings, and some slow-mo posing and face close ups so I threw in the towel and considered it enough! I warmed up a little on the drive home that and decided to do a little bit more filming before getting out of the cosplay. I wasn't able to set up our house for the chair scene, so we opted for some seated fan work and closeups against a red wall in my dance studio instead.
For the costume change, I pulled together some red and gold dance costume pieces from past performances, and gifts from friends, to make a dance outfit that resembled the Dark Phoenix costume from the comics. The last bit of the costume was a phoenix body chain I made using scrap foam, scrap stretch velvet from a past project, gold glitter HTV (Heat Transfer Vinyl), and beads I got from a secondhand craft shop. I attached the gold HTV to the velvet and glued the velvet to both sides of the scrap foam. I sealed the edges in hot glue that I colored gold, hated that, and then hand-beaded the edge with gold colored thread and red glass seed beads. I thought I was going to be able to do all that hand-beading in an afternoon… It took me 3 days.
I completed the body chain the morning I filmed the dance portion of the video. For that, I started with seated close up takes while my wig and make-up still looked their best. Then I took a few takes of dancing using Fly Fusion vocabulary. We finished with fan veils and Isis-wings. I edited the video the next day. Editing (I use Adobe Rush because of its simplicity) is a long and intensive process that is a little different every time I do it... So I don’t know how to explain it yet. Once that was done I submitted the video to Lisa and got ready to enjoy all the nerdy awesomeness of the virtual show!
I typically wait 2 weeks to a month before sharing videos from my online shows. This is to encourage more viewers to watch live, because these shows are filled with incredible dancers who put as much effort into these shows as they do into live shows.
Thankfully for my readers, the waiting period has passed so I have included the video below and I hope you enjoy it!
