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SATURDAY
Bolinas, California-based costumer and performance artist Sha Sha Higby would do fey French couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier proud. Why? Like Gaultier, Higby is a drama queen. Well, she’s a performance artist. And, like Gaultier, she makes clothes out of decadent materials like silk, gold leaf, and feathers. But Higby does Gaultier one weirder: she also uses things like wood, ceramic, and silk dipped in rabbit skin glue. Yes, rabbit skin glue. (Apparently that unfortunately named adhesive stiffens the fabric so it clinks when she moves). Higby calls her creations “costume sculptures,” and she dons them for performances where she becomes a moving, breathing sculpture traveling in ber slo-mo. Higby takes her cues from Japanese Noh theater, where, she says, “They move so slowly [that] you might be falling asleep while it’s happening, but this mountain of emotion builds up.” Thank goodness the girl doesn’t lack for patience. The construction of her outfits (a skill she learned while studying puppet- and mask-making in Japan, Indonesia, India, and Bhutan) requires a monk’s fortitude — it takes a year to make two masks. “They’re carved out of Hinoki wood,” she explains. “It’s fifty layers of bone lacquer sanded down [after] every fourth layer.” See the fruit of Higby’s labor at 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 9, at the Gunston Arts Center’s Theatre Two, 2700 S. Lang St., Arlington. $15. (703) 218-6500. (Jessica Dawson)