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Wondrousland

With each dance season’s new ballets, some become memorable with audiences and critics for their artistry and emotional connection, fewer reveal themselves as hits, and even fewer have the potential to become box office record breakers. Tulsa Ballet's new “Alice in Wonderland” is the rare gem that does all three.  

Performance

Tulsa Ballet: “Alice in Wonderland” by Kenneth Tindall

Place

Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Tulsa, OK, February 28, 2025

Words

Steve Sucato

Nao Ota as Alice and Shi Jean Kim as the White Rabbit in Tulsa Ballet's “Alice in Wonderland” by Kenneth Tindall. Photograph by Kate Luber

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A production for twenty-first-century dancegoers accustomed to technological wizardry, “Alice” was a multimedia spectacle of Broadway-level animations and projections, well-paced storytelling, vibrant music, illustrative choreography and voiceovers, and adroit dancing. The world premiere, performed to a packed Tulsa Performing Arts Center on Friday, February 28, 2025, was a triumph.

The two-act, two-hour, family-friendly ballet inspired by Lewis Carroll’s novel “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,” was choreographed by Kenneth Tindall and danced to original music by composer Alexandra Harwood (BBC TV’s All Creatures Great and Small) played live and with heart by the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra. It featured set and costume design by Two-time Tony Award-winning costume and set designer Christopher Oram (Disney’s Broadway show Frozen). Oram masterfully created the detailed and colorful costumes after the novel’s original drawings by John Tenniel that were constructed in Italy, along with large-scale set pieces and backdrops onto which Shawn Boyle's wow-inducing visual effects were projected.

It opened on Nao Ota, as Alice, the lone student in a classroom. Visibly bored, Ota fidgeted, slumped, and sighed at her desk, impatiently waiting for class to end as Governess, Jaimi Cullen, prodded her to regard a chalkboard wall filled with a math equation for her to solve. Looking out a large picture window in front of her, Alice saw her father dash by, only to turn briefly into a White Rabbit (Shi Jean Kim) and then back again.

Nao Ota (center) with Time dancers in Tulsa Ballet's “Alice in Wonderland” by Kenneth Tindall. Photograph by Kate Luber

Like the novel, the ballet followed Alice’s adventures in and out of Wonderland. Act One unfolded in familiar storybook fashion, with Alice dozing off after reading a book along the riverbank with her sister, then chasing the White Rabbit, only to fall down its rabbit hole in an eye-popping whirlwind of lighting and projection effects. Scenes of Alice miming drinking a potion from a bottle that made her small and eating a piece of cake that made her a giant were played out using shadow and projection effects. Here, and throughout the entire ballet, Ota’s larger-than-life emotional reactions and spirited dancing created a heartfelt connection with the viewer. Equally brilliant was the scene-stealing Kim as the White Rabbit. His big-air jumps and leaps seemed to suspend him above the stage at their apex. 

Tindall’s well-thought-out storytelling also included a bit of character invention to add corps de ballet roles and dances. The most consequential of them was “Time,” a group of recurring corps characters that represented the passage of time and aided in scene transitions and plot development.

While a good portion of Tindall’s choreography fell into the category of engaging movement in service of storytelling, like the ballet’s dazzling projections, moments of bravura movement magic were sprinkled onto the stage like magic dust. The first act’s most striking of these came with Alice’s encounter with the mystic-like Caterpillar (Jun Masuda), who transformed into a butterfly. In the scene, Ota, as Alice, danced a mesmerizing pas de deux with Masuda as the newly emerged butterfly.  In front of a backdrop of colorful giant mushrooms and shimmering firefly projections, the pair moved through liquid dance phrases and lovely partnered holds and lifts that ended with Ota in a backbend lift high over Masuda’s head.

Tulsa Ballet in “Alice in Wonderland” by Kenneth Tindall. Photograph by Kate Luber

After a cactus race with a collection of quicky characters, a brief encounter with Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and the appearance of a giant talking poster with a warning from the Queen of Hearts about tart-stealing, Act One concluded with Alice joining the Mad Hatter’s tea party, the highlight of which was a madcap jig-like solo set to thunderous Celtic music for the Mad Hatter, performed with abandon by Aubin Le Marchand. 

The only knock on the ballet thus far was the near absence of the Cheshire Cat, a favorite character in the story. Our Cat, an animated projection, was relegated to a few fleeting background appearances.   

Act Two upped the ante with the introduction of the wickedly funny Queen of Hearts, portrayed by Cullen. Gluttonous and clumsy, her over-the-top body language and facial expressions cut through the diva character’s head-chopping cruelty to reveal a most engaging villain. 

After playing a cute but rigged game of croquet with adorable Tulsa Ballet Center for Dance Education student dancers costumed as hedgehog croquet balls, Alice becomes embroiled in the trial of the Knave (Masuda), accused of stealing the tarts.

At it, Oda and Masuda engaged in another brilliant pas de deux before a series of body-contorting trial testimonies occurred. The best of those was Wilson's laugh-out-loud antics as the Cook, who sluggardly moved about the stage and flopped about the witness stand.

The ballet then ended with Alice uncovering the Tweedles as the real tart-stealing culprits and confronting the Queen. The ballet included a voiceover, as Alice explained to the Queen and all present how she overcame her fears and the Queen’s hold over her. The townsfolk then rallied around Alice, and the Queen was driven off.  Alice’s denouncement of the queen served as a sign of her coming of age as an independent young woman and perhaps also as a call for all of us to stand up to tyranny in our world as Alice had. 

In the end, the million-dollar production proved worth every penny and a must-see worth repeated viewing. 

Steve Sucato

Steve Sucato is a former dancer turned arts writer/critic living in Cleveland, Ohio. His writing credits include articles and reviews on dance and the arts for The Plain Dealer, Buffalo News, Erie Times-News, Dance Magazine, Pointe, Dance International, and web publications Critical Dance, DanceTabs (London), and Fjord Review. Steve is chairman emeritus of the Dance Critics Association and the creator of the arts website artsair.art. 

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