Since 2014, she participated in the research project Performing Premodernity, connecting interdisciplinary research group of international academic and artistic scholars devoted to studying the musical and theatrical ideals, practices and conditions between 1760 and 1815. Between 2015 and 2017, she was assistant researcher in the project Ritual design on the ballet stage: Constructions of Popular Culture in the European Theatre Dance (1650–1760), funded by Emmy Noether Program of DFG and led by Dr. Hanna Walsdorf at University of Leipzig. Within these projects, she participated at the organization of several workshops (‘Body Dance Costume’ in Leipzig, 2016, ‘Costume & Light’ in Confidencen Theatre, Stockholm, 2017) and collaborated at costume-making for historically informed performances of Pygmalion (2015, Český Krumlov, 2016, Stockholm/Riddarhuset), and Le devin du village (2019, Stockholm/Confidencen).

Together with Dr. Hanna Walsdorf, she co-edited anthology Body Dance Costume, published by Leipziger Universitätverlag in 2019.

Her doctoral thesis Costume in the Time of Reforms: Louis-René Boquet Designing Eighteenth-Century Ballet and Opera, defended at Stockholm University in September 2020, is focusing on French designer Louis-René Boquet (1717-1814), on the early modern costume for opera and ballet and its transformation in the age of Enlightenment.

In 2021 she became Bernadottestipendiat of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. In the same year, she also received stipends from Anna Ahlströms and Ellen Terserus Foundation, from Carina Ari Foundation, and was awarded with the international postdoc grant of the Swedish Research Council.

This grant supports her three-year research project “The Fabrication of Performance: Processes and Politics of Costume-Making in the 18th Century”, conducted in collaboration with Centre de musique baroque Versailles.

Project description:

In the 18th century, theatre was an important tool for promoting both political and personal agendas, and it can be seen as a barometer of socio-political changes. While theatrical costumes have traditionally been seen as a mere decoration or, at best, as a dramaturgical tool, this project will promote them also as the fabric through which power and ideology were expressed. In order to do this, the investigation of their materiality as well as of their relation to people in necessary.

The project focuses particularly on costume in Paris and Stockholm between 1748 and 1792, which differed in their social, cultural and political development, and yet were connected. A complex network of people contributed to the costume-making process: managers, playwrights, designers, suppliers, tailors, performers and other artists, but also royals, courtiers etc. Studying their involvement in the process and its embodiment in the clothing can therefore uncover individual agendas as well as larger power structures within the theatre.

As a tool to facilitate this research, a digital database will be created that would gather and interlink sources about the period’s costume from ten French and Swedish archives, enable finding similarities and differences among material and people. Since the technical infrastructure is crucial for this project, it will be conducted in collaboration with Centre de musique baroque Versailles, which has experience with and will provide the digital tools needed.

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Costume in the Time of Reforms

  2020. Petra Dotlačilová.

  Thesis (Doc)

  The long eighteenth century was a turbulent period in France, many crucial reforms in society, politics and art challenging the established order of the ancien régime. This battle took place on the theatrical stage as well and materialized in the approach to costume. The present thesis examines the development of theatrical costume – especially for opera and ballet – during this period, with particular focus on the so-called costume reform. Who were the main personalities of the reform and what were their arguments? How did it relate to the artistic and social context of the period? And most importantly: how did the new ideas materialize in practice? In order to explore these issues, the work of Louis-René Boquet (1717–1814), the leading costume designer of the French court and the Paris Opéra, a collaborator of the fairground theatres and the reform choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre, is used as the main reference point.

  In accordance with recent theoretical approaches to costume research, formulated for instance by Aoife Monks, Anne Verdier, Donatella Barbieri and Veronica Isaac, costume is regarded as a specific object within theatrical practice, and as a crucial agent in the production of the body on stage. This helps to define eighteenth-century costume as a crossroads where aesthetic, social, dramaturgical and physical requirements met and negotiated. Drawing on a wealth of textual, visual and material evidence, the methodology applied in the research combines approaches from material culture studies and theatre studies, including practice as research, connecting aesthetic theory with the analysis of performance and sartorial practices.

  The thesis is divided into two parts; the first part investigates mainly the theoretical discourse around costume, and the second part focuses on the making and agency of the costume in the context of theatrical practice, particularly at the French court, at the Paris Opéra and in Stuttgart, investigating the development of the reform through Boquet’s work. Two concepts of costume are defined and discussed, one driven by the ‘aesthetics of propriety’, which includes the (courtly) social proprieties of dress within the concept of verisimilitude; another driven by ‘aesthetics of truthfulness’, which views the stage as a tableau, therefore requiring a depiction of dress from different periods and locations similar to that in paintings, but also a costume that is adapted to the dramatic situations of the characters. The latter defines the movement of the reform. However, this thesis suggests that we should distinguish between two phases of the reform: a moderate ‘first wave’ (1750s–1770s) and a more radical ‘second wave’ (from c.1783). Focusing particularly on the pioneering ‘first wave’, and investigating costume strategies for various genres, themes and characters, this study shows how the first reformers negotiated with the older conventions and changing fashions, how they insisted on the specificity of the theatrical costume, and the extent to which the practices of the popular stages influenced those of the serious genres. Boquet’s work, previously considered conventional or ‘unreformed’, is shown to embody the different stages and issues of the reform: a unique example of the dynamic development of costume in the second half of the eighteenth century.

  Read more about Costume in the Time of Reforms

• Dance Body Costume

  2019. .

  Book (ed)

  Read more about Dance Body Costume

• Picturing the Horror

  2017. Petra Dotlacilova. Terpsichore and her Sisters, 51-66

  Conference

  Read more about Picturing the Horror

Show all publications by Petra Dotlacilová at Stockholm University