WA Ballet's 'Alice' returns

After a rambunctious, award-winning Australian premiere season in 2019, the West Australian Ballet is taking another trip down the rabbit hole and bringing back Septime Webre’s ALICE (in wonderland) to the stage. 

The family-friendly ballet, which stays true to Lewis Carroll’s classic book, is a behemoth production, with 214 bedazzling costumes designed by Cirque du Soleil costume designer Liz Vandal, 166 props used every show and over 200 lighting cues alone in the two-hour performance. 

“The elation seen on the more than 20,000 audience members in 2019 shows the happiness the arts bring, and ALICE is an amazing production that we had to bring back,” says the WA Ballet's artistic director, Aurélien Scannella. 

“Our dancers will fly, both in their jumps and metres in the air with the Flying by Foy system. This is more than a ballet.” 

The company's 2019 staging of the ballet won Best Dance Production and Best Female Dancer for Principal Dancer Chihiro Nomura at the Performing Arts WA Awards. 

Las Vegas’s Flying by Foy are world leaders in aerography training and effects and have designed sequences for stars like Beyoncé and the Billy Elliot and Tarzan productions. Their rigging for this production includes a tandem bicycle ridden by Tweedledee and Tweedledum and an amazing "growth" scene for Alice.

In addition, puppet designer Eric Van Wyk has created a gigantic Jabberwocky. The puppet, which is over five metres in length when on-stage, is operated by seven dancers.

ALICE (in wonderland) is showing from May 6 to 21 at His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth.

For more info, go here.