Iberê Camargo’s artistic talents in creating the costumes for the ballet “As Icamiabas”

Abstract

The field of fashion is close to that of costume design, not only because of the clothes and accessories used in a characterization, but also because of their representativeness in visually showing the culture and behavior of a society at a given time. In 1959, in Rio de Janeiro, Iberê Camargo carried out a series of costume studies for the ballet “As Icamiabas,” inspired by a set of legends and documents bequeathed by the first chroniclers who were in the Amazon forest and had contact with tribes of warrior women. The objective of this article is to address the representation constructed by Iberê Camargo for the costumes of the ballet “As Icamiabas.” To this end, this article is concerned with presenting the legend, which permeates the Brazilian cultural imagination, and describing how the figures in this artistic ballet were represented. The methodology is based on a bibliographical review and a description of the costumes, based on the accounts found in the literature on the plural dress of native peoples. The results show that Iberê Camargo’s artistic interpretation includes a mixture of elements that are reminiscent of indigenous culture, such as skin paintings, but also incorporates clothes that are not part of the cultural context and imagery of the legend, but are part of the artistic proposal, a ballet show.