Photo by Mark Frohna
Septime Webre’s Alice (in wonderland) asks us to look no deeper than its surface. Meant to dazzle, it’s a series of showstoppers ending in buttons that call for applause. Bigger numbers even bring their soloists back onstage for full-fledged curtain calls. Like many ballets, especially old ones, it’s a parade of difficult and variously effective stunts. Although the women seated beside me, their hands perhaps sore, left at intermission, most of the full house cheered on cue throughout both acts. I’m not wiser than anyone else in the opening night audience but after a Milwaukee Ballet season composed entirely of multi-layered, intellectually exciting ballets—one of the company’s best seasons, I think—I found this a letdown.
After introducing Alice in a simply sweet solo, Webre brings her real-life family onstage. Their behavior is so extreme that there’s little difference when we meet them later in Wonderland costumes. Subsequent episodes follow the sequence of Lewis Carroll’s novel without really capturing its anxiousness and absurdity. In obeisance to the cliché that heroines must slay monsters (or wicked witches) to reach their journey’s end, Alice grabs a sword from the wings and kills (O frabjous day!) the Jabberwock, a large, soulless dragon. She’s taken to trial; the court dissolves; Alice wakes in wonder, perhaps a richer person for having had her imagination stirred.
Alice is almost always dancing. She’s frequently lifted and flipped in impossible positions. The sorts of breathtaking lifts usually saved for the second act climax arrive in the show’s very first pas de deux, when Carroll gives Alice his book and leaves her to dream. The choreography builds in difficulty from there. The company’s men work especially hard.
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Annia Hidalgo, exquisite as Alice on opening night, made the role look like fun. Davit Hovhannisyan, ever the perfect partner, was generous as Carroll. Alice’s duet with the Cheshire Cat, played by Patrick Howell with the perfect degree of perversity, was the other highlight. Mostly, though, the masks, costumes and showy choreography inhibited this company’s genius for creating characters you care about. These were the final performances of four beloved, irreplaceable dancers: the great Marc Petrocci, Susan Gartell, Valerie Harmon and Alexandre Ferreira. They did all they could as various animals and playing cards and that was a lot.
