The classic tale of Alice in Wonderland begins with Alice falling asleep on her sister’s lap as she reads a Victorian moralistic fairy tale: “And what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “Without pictures or conversations?” As I sat down at the Hummingbird Centre for the National Ballet’s adaptation of my favourite book, I thought to myself, “What is the use of a performance of Alice without the witty dialogue, the madly straightforward narrative, and the illustrations that are a classic part of so many childhoods? How can they create this bizarre world that I have perfected in my head?”
They didn’t, they can’t, and they couldn’t have. But what they did insteadwas equally interesting. Almost all adaptations of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland revolve around Lewis Carroll (the pen name for Charles Dodgson), the mathematics genius, the humorous writer, children’s photographer, and almost certainly it seems, also a pedophile.
He told the stories to Alice and then put the stories together in a bound book to give to her for Christmas, but regretted he wasn’t done with the illustrations. In the ballet, this plot was added to Alice’s plot-less wanderings. She begins following Carroll as he dances his tale on a summer day. She follows his steps but notices the White Rabbit run across the stage. She follows him, falls into a bottomless pit, and ends up in Wonderland.
Each chapter of the book involves Alice encountering a strange and wonderful character. Each one is incredibly rude and confusing. Some have suggested the characters have the knowledge of adults but the attitudes of children who are forced to live by rules they hate. In the face of these lunatics, Alice’s driving force is curiosity. They can be rude to her, they may question her, but she always moves on, explores more, and no logical conundrum is strong enough to slow her down.
It would have been impossible for the ballet to capture all this. It did however very cleverly accomplish what a ballet can do just as well as book: portray the moods and emotions of certain scenes.Once Alice is in Wonderland, the ballet proceeds to examine each of her encounters with new characters (with scenes following the chapters of the book approximately). Regrettably, ballet dancers speak, so they could not achieve any of Carroll’s brilliantly comic moments. Instead, the dancers conveyed the attitude of the characters with movement, and all of the humor had to come from their bodies.
Most of the time, we at least got an idea of their character. They got the critical things right. All characters in Wonderland are rude to Alice, so in the ballet they all turned their heads away from her when she saw each of them for the first time. The choreography was undeniably amusing, reminiscent of the best of the Marx Brothers.
However, without the words I did miss the confusing logical problems inherent in the book that never cease to make me smile. Some parts of the dance were rather clever: to represent Alice growing tall and short from eating and drinking various things, 20 different female dancers of different shapes and sizes crowded the stage, all in Alice costume. The hookah-smoking Caterpiller was perfectly cute and elegant in the way it waddled along the ground. The March Hare was perfect. His silly dance was similar to the Mad Hatter’s (beautifully sloppy), but additionally he chased around the White Rabbit like a real frolicking rabbit. The ballet also did a nice job with the underappreciated character of the Mock Turtle: his sorrow at remembering he was once a real turtle comes across well. In fact, none of the characters are untrue to the book-a real achievement.
The critical thing about this ballet was that it brought up the theme of Carroll’s pedophilia. In the book, Alice’s realization that she is in Wonderland is revealed with little epiphanies: “‘It was much pleasanter at home,’ thought poor Alice, ‘when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits.'” Whenever some thought like this occurs to Alice, the ballet moved to a scene of Lewis Carroll dancing with Alice (i.e. ‘reality’ instead of fantasy). These dances get more and more serious as the epiphanies go by, and eventually the audience realizes that something isn’t right. Carroll and Alice are doing a form of ballet almost as sensual as the tango, but he is at least 20 years older than her, and moreover she is a little girl. It’s here where it is hard to balance the ballet’s more humourous slant with the portrayal of such a sickening personality on the stage.
But this theme of loss of innocence is not isolated in the production-Alice finds a white glove that the White Rabbit drops, and puts it on, the changes in body size are reminiscent of puberty, and the long caterpillar who humps the ground as he enters and exits might just be considered a phallic symbol. In the end, however, the audience does not leave on a sour note, as Alice comes out of the dream, and sees an older vision of herself looking back with nostalgia.
Though a nice touch, I couldn’t help but share Alice’s sentiments from the book, which ends with a ridiculous trial of the Knave of Hearts where everyone seems to go crazy. Frustrated, Alice cries, “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” Trying to reconcile the difference between the visions of Wonderland in my own head and what I had just seen, I thought, “Nice try, but compared to my imagination, you’re nothing but a pack of ballet dancers!”
