ALiCE, Jasmin Vardimon
Jasmin Vardimon, ALiCE © Tristram Kenton
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll’s mad-as-a-hatter children’s novel, is one of the few works from the last 200 years to be so well known as to need no introduction.
This thought struck me as I watched Jasmin Vardimon’s interpretation of the beloved novel last Friday. The acrobatic and inventive choreographer is a perfect candidate to take on Carroll’s fantasy story, her imagination so varied and unmatched as to fully realise the weirdness of Alice’s uncanny adventure (in fact, it was originally a post-covid VR experience). The story is so well known that Vardimon could rip up and play with the story, confident that we would understand the references. It’s just a shame the resulting work didn’t really know what it was.
Jasmin Vardimon, ALiCE © Tristram Kenton
The piece started before it began (a Carroll phrase if ever I saw one). A video of a 24-hour clock was projected on stage as we took our seats, reminding us that the show was 5 minutes late starting (purposefully it transpired, the white rabbit is late for an important date after all). Closer inspection revealed that the clock was in fact made of humans. Every minute on the minute they deftly change position to form a new number. A masterclass in scene setting.
It was this level of out-of-the-box thinking that made me fall in love with Vardimon’s choreography in February with NOW, and there was plenty on display here too. Human Alice appeared from behind an animated one before being pulled through a door, first large then small. It was then revealed that the screen the animation had been on was in fact a page in a large book, the pages turned from above by a vape-smoking caterpillar (later butterfly) as the ginormous set piece spun around. Reader, I’m still in awe. As the pages turned, new scenes were unveiled, from a Cheshire Cat to a tea party on a tipped-up table, to a hiker also lost on his way to Wonderland, to the Red Queen playing croquet with flamingos (and defeated with a leaf blower). All was laced with Vardimon’s acrobatic style, the dancers posing on their heads or performing the worm on their backs (how?!).
Jasmin Vardimon, ALiCE © Tristram Kenton
While this sounds like a fabulously standard night in Wonderland, the story became muddied as Vardimon interlaced scenes from Alice’s real life. A too-long, high-energy dance break to ‘Who the f— is Alice’ was soon followed by a relationship which flitted between loving and disastrous each time they stepped through a door. In the final scenes, Alice’s whole life flashed before us, as she bid farewell to lovers (and Trump?), took down right-wing protesters and passed away of old age.
This work was billed as a coming-of-age story on the vaguest terms, about a woman exploring a bonkers world and her changing body. While it hits this brief, it was hard in the moment to see how Carroll and Vardimon’s Alices interwove together. It was as if two stories were being told within each other, and I struggled at times to know what to make of it. Was Carroll’s Alice, all but forgotten at the end, the childhood she was leaving behind? A tighter narrative would have helped.
All I know is, the deeper I delve into Vardimon’s world, the curiouser and curiouser it becomes.
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