“Movement is contorted and manic, but also clever, imaginative, and precise”
Since its publication in 1865, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland has been adapted dozens of times. While the adult themes of the children’s book are widely acknowledged, Joelene English’s modern dance piece, Alice: The Lost Chapter, delves into the darker side of the story. She explores Alice’s troubled subconscious and subverts other familiar characters, presenting us with a straight-jacketed Mad Hatter, a pained, grimacing Cheshire cat and an anxious, tense White Rabbit.
English’s production combines dance, physical theatre and film, to create an unflinchingly dark and atmospheric piece. Alison Ashton’s gorgeous set, reminiscent of a Tim Burton or Guillermo del Toro film, sets the nightmarish tone perfectly. Mismatched wooden furniture, a closet with a staircase of drawers, a cobweb-shrouded picture frame, an eerie dressing table and a writing desk containing different sized doors become a dark and whimsical playground for the disturbed characters. The stunning video projections complete the effect, making the atmosphere of the piece utterly engrossing.
English’s choreography draws on contemporary experimental physical theatre rather than traditional dance. It is aggressively and persistently confrontational and uncomfortable for its audience. Movement is contorted and manic, but also clever, imaginative, and precise, while the decidedly unmusical soundscape is jarring and strange.
Alicia Meehan’s Alice hovers between the wide-eyed curiosity we associate with the character and a more unsettling, obsessive watchfulness. English has given her some gorgeously haunting choreography – we often see her in the background dangling in a closet or precariously perched on set pieces. The other characters frantically guide Alice through this ‘wonderland’, scuttling or twitching their way around the stage.
The overarching effect of the piece is that of a disjointed and hypnotic dream. Several moments, however, stand out. The Mad Hatter’s tea party is fiercely anxious. The four characters scramble desperately around the table before freezing in contorted positions then melting away. In the opening sequence Alice is seated as the Red Queen stands behind her doing her hair. What begins as a slightly uncomfortable maternal scene, quickly evolves into a display of desperate obsession and control. The queen then disappears for the remainder of the piece. In Meehan’s final haunting solo, she dances with a bright red dress, reminding us of the Queen’s absence and creating an agonising sense of loneliness and longing.
English’s Alice is ultimately a harrowing, challenging commentary on mental health. Carroll’s world makes for the perfect, twisted backdrop upon which the subconscious mind can come to life through movement. As with any excellent piece of theatre, Alice forces its audience to confront itself. It is simultaneously beautiful and grotesque, captivating and deeply painful. The mesmerising piece is gripping from start to finish and will be hard to shake from the memory.
“The makeup is also important to defining characters, and is incredibly effective and intricate”
Peking Opera, or Jingju as it’s known in China, is an art form which began in the eighteenth century as an amalgamation of several existing traditions. It involves singing, mime, movement, acrobatics and stage combat. It is highly stylised and features four major ‘types’ of performer. There is the Sheng character, or male lead, the Dan, or female lead, the Jing which is the painted face character and the Chou, or clown. Each performer will have studied for up to eight years to achieve the necessary understanding and expertise, and will usually only perform one character type. It’s Opera Jim, but not as we know it. There is little that western opera goers would recognise as a chorus, and there are no duets, almost always everyone sings alone. Actually. it’s not really opera at all, Jingju means ‘capital drama.’
I was lucky enough to be invited to go on a backstage tour before the show. It was fascinating to see the beautiful costumes and props close up and to meet Fan Wu, the Production Coordinator and Kevin Zhang, the Producer. They were charming, and clearly enjoyed explaining the meaning of the costumes and some of the traditions of Peking Opera. All the costumes are hand embroidered, and feature dragons and phoenixes and flowers. The male high class characters can wear dragon robes, and the high class females wear phoenixes. High status characters have ‘water sleeves,’ very long white sleeve extensions that float and flow, and symbolise the fact that they have no need to work. The tour definitely helped with understanding the action when the performance began.
The on stage orchestra play a mixture or percussion and stringed instruments, providing the backdrop to the movement and song. Movement is highly stylised and non naturalistic. From the graceful, willowy hand movements of the maids to the incredible acrobatics of the warriors, they all have to be mastered perfectly by the performers, a process that, along with vocal technique, combat skills and takes about eight years training. There is no room for improvisation or alteration of the established movements, but the actors seek to allow their own personality to shine through the traditional gestures.
The singing is so different to anything in western music that it can be difficult to appreciate. I wish the volume had been less ear bleeding, because to those of us not accustomed to the style of singing it could, at times, feel like an aural assault, especially in the higher register. By half way through the first act I was enjoying the male voices, in particular that of Yu Kuizhi’s Emperor, but the female voices were harder for me to like. The sound is shrill and harsh to the western ear, but clearly very skillful. Li Shengsu plays the Concubine with grace and beauty. I would like to understand the vocal techniques better so that I could appreciate her voice more.
One thing that could be improved on are the text descriptions. I would be surprised if a native English speaker had been involved in writing them, as there are several grammatical mistakes, and some amusing phrases that are not intended to be so.
The sets are sumptuous and the costumes, as I have already mentioned, are stunning. The makeup is also important to defining characters, and is incredibly effective and intricate. All in all The Emperor and the Concubine was an enjoyable and interesting experience, but it is hard to judge the quality of an art form that is so outside our normal experience. From watching the ecstatic response of the Chinese people in the audience, it was very good indeed.
