Costume design in Western dance performance ranges from street and rehearsal wear to fashionable dress and ground-breaking artistic innovation. However, few scholarly studies have been published on dance costume.

This doctoral thesis appears as a landmark body of work due to its dedicated focus on costume design in contemporary dance in the twenty-first century, explored through selected case studies from Finland. Core to this study are the interconnections between design processes, costume outcomes, and collaboration. As this enquiry reveals, costume outcomes are shaped not only by conceptual and material choices but also by co-creative and interpersonal exchanges during the design process between costume designers, choreographers, and other members of a creative team.

This thesis advances current knowledge in dance costume by examining underexplored themes such as the use of everyday garments as costume, the formative nature of costume in dance performance, and the far-reaching effects of sustainable collaboration in performance-making.