Promo for the dance show "Alice" by the MOMIX band (PR)
Many confusing and strange things happened to Alice in Wonderland.
She swam in the pool of her own tears, grew taller and taller, was insulted enough by various strange characters, some of whom even threatened to burn her and behead her.
Things were so shocking that she doubted that she was herself and not, let's say, someone else.
Nevertheless, after Kitza slept, she thought to herself: "What a wonderful dream it was."
She's not the only one: for years, her dream has stirred readers, researchers and artists, urging them to reimagine for themselves what Lewis Carroll - that is: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, in his real name - probably conceived for his very young friend, nine-year-old Alice Liddell.
More than fifty years have passed since Alice went down to the rabbit hole, following her late friend, and from there to Wonderland: that pointless, absurd and absurd place, where everyone is crazy.
Since her adventures were first published in a book, generations upon generations of children and adults have occupied themselves with the riddle "Why does the raven resemble a desk?"
And the other secrets and games of illogicality inherent in the story, while the Queen of Hearts, the hookah smoking caterpillar, the spring rabbit and the Mad Hatter became cultural heroes.
The work has been adapted to every possible medium - including plays and paintings, silent films and animation, songs and computer games, among others, and in fact what not?
Now, the Israeli audience will have the opportunity to get to know her in another way: in a show by the American dance troupe MOMIX, led by choreographer Moses Pendleton, which will perform throughout the country - Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Ashdod and Kiryat Motzkin, from December 28 to January 6 .
A show that is both spectacular and confusing.
From "Alice" (Photo: Sharen Bradford)
into the rabbit hole.
From "Alice" (Photo: Sharen Bradford)
Pendleton, who is also known as one of the founders of the dance troupe "Filobolus" in the 70s, founded MOMIX a decade later.
Since then, the ensemble has been traveling the world for about 40 years, and even came to Israel several times - most recently in 2019. "Alice" is the newest creation of the ensemble members, after several years of work.
"Alice in Wonderland" has already been adapted into a ballet before, and even so it is worth remembering that on the face of it, it is a particularly complex challenge: after all, the genius of "Alice in Wonderland" is based on nonsense, puns and delusional dialogues - how can all this be translated into the silent language of The movement and the body?
Well, Pendleton and his company - nine dancers on stage - found a way: "Alice", which has already been performed more than 200 times around the world, is both a spectacular and confusing show, which corresponds to the various episodes in the book without sticking to the familiar plot or necessarily retelling it.
The verbal illogical amusements were translated into deceptive and surprising illusions, games of light and shadow, mirror mazes and gliding, with characters that come and disappear, in what sometimes seems like a circus or magic show as much as a dance show, or at least like a really crazy tea party.
This spectacle does not come at the expense of poetics: it is enough to note how the beautiful opening image, in which Alice swings on a ladder and flies in her imagination to Wonderland, or the way in which the caterpillar, as a figure and image, disintegrates into rubber balls in another fascinating image.
The music that accompanies the show is varied, ranging from Indian songs to, of course, "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane, which also closes the evening.
This complex - whimsical, colorful,
The surreal nonsense was translated into a mime show.
From "Alice" (photo: Sharen Bradford)
In a joint meeting in Amsterdam of journalists from Israel with two of the young dancers in the troupe, Sia Hagen and Shawn Langford, and with Pendleton himself, 73 years old, who zooms in from his home in the United States, the choreographer talks about the natural connection between the troupe and Carroll's work.
"Many times people looked at our works, before 'Alice', and said it was very reminiscent of 'Alice in Wonderland,'" he explains, "so the way to describe Momix is also the way to describe the surrealistic nonsense of Lewis Carroll."
At the same time, he emphasizes that "Alice in Wonderland" has always been intended for visual processing, and mentions the famous illustrations that accompanied the book, as well as his first stage productions, which Carroll watched during his lifetime.
"In his head, this was the ultimate way to express his work."
An example of this also comes in a surprising answer provided by Pendleton to a question from one of my colleagues, about the impression the book left on him when he was a child himself.
To this the choreographer surprisingly replies that another version of "Alice" influenced him much more then.
"I'm not even sure I even read the book at the time. I grew up on the Disney version of 'Alice in Wonderland,' so the Cheshire Cat and the Caterpillar are all characters that left an indelible impression on my mind when I was young. My generation didn't have a boy in America, maybe in the world, who has not seen and experienced this film," he says.
On the other hand, he mentions in the conversation another number of adaptations of "Alice" in different mediums, from the films of Tim Burton to a series of paintings by Salvador Dali.
More in Walla!
Back to the rabbit hole: 150 years of "Alice in Wonderland"
To the full article
Illusory, colorful, enigmatic and unsolved.
From "Alice" (Photo: Sharen Bradford)
In one of the dialogues in the book, the ridiculous duchess tells Alice: "There is a message in everything, if you only know how to discover it."
Therefore, I ask him: Do you think there is any message for this show?
"The lesson, I think, is that imagination is very important, and that children's way of thinking is something we should not lose when we grow old. This is perhaps the lesson: we can all imagine it," he replies.
Perhaps I might suggest that the message is that the stage is the real wonderland?
"The stage can be, one can hope, a wonderland, and the audience in a sense is like Alice, they are invited - Momix invites him - to enter into the wonderland," he answers.
The writer was in Amsterdam at the invitation of the production of the show.
culture
Tags
Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
dance
