CHOREOGRAPHERS WHO WEAR THEIR ART ON THEIR SLEEVES

Wherever you look these days, choreographers are discovering the world of fashion and, in turn, fashion is taking an interest in dance.

To some observers, this trend presages the trivialization of yet another art form. But, to others, fashion represents the most direct route to attracting younger audiences who feel as strong a connection to it as they do to rock ‘n’ roll. Consider the evidence:

Scene 1: the recent Brooklyn Academy of Music “Next Wave” Festival. Michael Clark--at 24, the aging enfant terrible of British dance--is making his New York debut with “No Fire Escape in Hell.” He first appears in a black backless leotard with shards of black ribbon outlining his midriff while dancers dressed as sequined versions of London bobbies (designed by Leigh Bowery and Body Map) beat him up.

Later, Clark wears a housewife’s nightie (replete with exaggerated male genitalia); later still a top made of nothing but stuffed pillows in the shape of human legs.

Scene 2: the Palladium, New York’s most massive night club. On a classic T-shaped runway fit for a fashion show, the dance company of Regine Chopinot, a 34-year-old French choreographer from Lyons, prances through 14 different combinations of costumes designed over a three-year period for “Le Defile” (“The Runway Show”)--by the current rage of the fashion world, Jean-Paul Gaultier.

With platform shoes of different heights, two-foot-wide fleece leggings and massive crinoline skirts of stretched macrame, Chopinot’s U.S. debut is a succes de scandale.

Scene 3: Dance Theater Workshop in New York’s Chelsea. Stephen Petronio’s award-winning choreography is composed of a multitude of subtle, rapid undulations and wriggles, but the process of watching it is eased by the loose, architectural clothes created for him by designer Yonson Pak.

“What I do is primarily a two-dimensional process put into three dimensions,” said Petronio recently. “Yonson’s clothes are part of what makes that possible.”

“The clothes I dance in have to allow me to make quick assemblages and disassemblages of imagery. If you’re looking for new archetypes for the body or the spirit, you have to be looking around at people who deal with that--and fashion does.”

In Pak, a 30-year-old designer who came to this country from Korea 15 years ago, Petronio (also 30) found the perfect partner. Pak’s clothes for him are oversized shirts and pants whose dimensions allow the viewer to distinguish between the body and the fabric that encloses it.

“What you see is all flat when it’s on the hanger,” Pak said. “I don’t drape the fabric. It’s only when you put it on, when they enter into three dimensions, that the clothes really come to life.”

For choreographer Clark--a new breed of dandy for whom style is all--fashion is totally entwined with both his work and his daily life. Clark not only choreographs Body Map’s fashion shows, he also wears many of their clothes on the street.

“Fashion is the one area of people’s lives where they still have some creative input,” Clark commented. “For me, it’s not about going out and buying something somebody else has worked on. I think what I do transcends fashion and that’s why I ask designers to work for me. It gives them an outlet they don’t normally have.”

One look at Clark’s costumes leaves little doubt why this is so: These outfits go beyond mere razzle-dazzle to shock and outrage audiences--especially when seen in the midst of Clark’s sexually-charged, punkish ballets. You certainly wouldn’t (and can’t) expect to find these clothes in any shop.

Ironically, however, many of Clark’s costumes have their roots in the highly controversial clothes that have made Jean-Paul Gaultier a star of contemporary fashion.

Gaultier’s metier has always involved mixing styles of clothing from different historical eras with perverse glee. Street chic is wedded to classical form, then given a soupcon of punkish styling.

More than four years ago, Chopinot called Gaultier to collaborate on her latest performance, and the designer contributed a few of his more wildly stylized creations.

“What impressed me most about Jean-Paul?” she asked rhetorically. “His perversity. He does the same thing in fashion that I do in dance. I take something from classic dance--a gesture or a movement--and turn its classicism around. Jean-Paul does the same thing with clothing.”

Gaultier soon began to use Chopinot’s dancers as models for his runway shows, and many in the fashion world were critical of what they assumed were his strange choices--including a black man nearly seven feet tall and several plump women.

“People told me I couldn’t do that because shows are to sell clothes,” said Gaultier. “But for me, the show is not to sell the clothes but to sell the image, and more than that, it’s to show what I want to say.”

It took the help of nine different public and corporate sponsors to come up with the money to create “Le Defile,” but it gave Gaultier the opportunity to pour out his wildest visions. Often his designs seemed intended to deliberately constrict the dancing. Massive hoop skirts as wide as a whole person are not, after all, conducive to balletic grace.

“The point of ‘Le Defile,’ ” Chopinot said, “was to reflect on the question, ‘What is a costume today?’--to ask what influence does costume have on the body; how does one walk, run, live a costume?

“You see,” she added with a laugh, “I really am passionate about fashion, but for 10 or 15 years in France and the rest of the world, fashion has been the domain of a small elite. I think that’s now starting to change partly because we are mixing up these audiences. So there may be little difficulties with figuring out how to dance in these clothes. But these things really aren’t problems for me.”

“The hardest thing is to figure out what a costume is, how one can show it off. Everything else is mere accessory.”