SEE THE SHOW: Alice in Wonderland
April 12-13, 2 p.m., at the River Center Theatre for Performing Arts
“A Very Important Date” character meet-and-greet following show (requires additional ticket)
Find tickets and info at batonrougeballet.org.
A maze of doors. A pool of tears. A precocious girl who tracks a white rabbit and matches wits with a loony royal. Lewis Carroll’s famed novel comes to life through dance this month in Baton Rouge Ballet Theatre’s original production of Alice in Wonderland.
Performed by the arts organization’s company of dancers, the ballet features choreography by BRBT Artistic Directors Jonna Cox and Rebecca Acosta, and music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky arranged by Carl Davis, Gustav Holst, Alfred Reynolds and Jacques Offenbach.
The arts organization is best known for its annual production, The Nutcracker – A Tale from the Bayou, but this month’s show represents another chance to stage a familiar fable. BRBT often performs a narrative ballet in the spring, seen through past productions like Cinderella and Rapunzel.
“Our audiences love stories, and our dancers love telling stories,” Cox says. “There’s something that touches the heart when you’re following a story.”
And Alice, with its trippy mayhem and wacky characters, is fun to watch. Cox’s and Acosta’s choreography is matched with sets designed by Baton Rouge-based professional set designer Adriane Bennett, along with a fleet of new costumes conceived by Cox and Acosta and made by local sewers.
Baton Rouge Magnet High School junior Megan Guo plays Alice, and Berean Homeschool Co-op junior Elliana Chaney is the White Rabbit. BRBT dance instructor Alyssa Bourque, a former company member who earned a bachelor of fine arts in dance from Belhaven University, plays the Queen of Hearts.
In 2021, Cox and Acosta created a 30-minute youth ballet version of Alice in Wonderland that served as a starting point for this show. About 75 dancers from age 7 to early 20s will now perform additional, complex numbers across two full acts.
“It’s a grander, much bigger scale production than the last time we did it,” Cox says.
For example, the previous show featured two magical doors on wheels operated by dancers, which Alice navigates after she falls down the rabbit hole.
The expanded production has nine magical doors, along with a 12-foot door that makes an aerial entrance, Cox says.
The costume team included Polly Normand, a retired electrical engineer known for creating several beloved looks for The Nutcracker, including Clara, and the Russian, Spanish and Chinese divertissements. Cox and Acosta spent several months scheming the designs, which range from Alice’s classic blue dress and white pinafore to the outlandish looks worn by Wonderland’s absurdist characters. Among others, audiences will be charmed by the tufted red-and-white polka-dotted caps donned by the Mushrooms, and the technicolor wigs and overalls sported by goofy twin brothers Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
“Our audiences love stories, and our dancers love telling stories. There’s something that touches the heart when you’re following a story.”
[—Jonna Cox, BRBT artistic director]
Acosta says she’s particularly excited by the looks Normand created for the new “Talking Flowers” number. The costumes feature a green bodice with flowing skirts in either lavender or yellow. Eschewing stiff tutus, Normand used chiffon so the skirts sway like foliage in the breeze, Acosta says.
Bennett’s series of original sets depict Alice’s progression from reading with her sister on a riverbank where the story starts, to various locations in Wonderland. Also serving as the show’s stage manager, Bennett leveled up the world-building with detailed sets and whimsical painted backdrops.
Other visual delights include “The Pool of Tears,” created by fabric mimicking rising water after an oversized Alice cries in frustration, and “The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party,” where performers dance on a sprawling crumpet-strewn table.
“It’s going to be really fun,” Acosta says.
And like Alice would say, curiouser and curiouser.
This article was originally published in the April 2025 issue of 225 Magazine.
