Phila. choreographer explores everyday details.
By A.D. Amorosi, For The Inquirer
Since it was published in 1865, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has gone through the psychedelic rigors of Disneyfication in the 1950s and being turned into an X-rated musical flick in the ’70s. It has had a Broadway revival and been adapted as Japanese anime (Fushigi no Kuni no Alice), a Sesame Street special, and a German opera with Tom Waits music.
But Philadelphia choreographer Nichole Canuso’s Wandering Alice still stands out, as a highlight of the fall’s Live Arts Festival and, this week, as part of Canuso’s first benefit cabaret.
The audience-participation dreamscape piece by the Nichole Canuso Dance Company offered crowds a liberating walk through the looking glass (lots of ascending/descending stairs at Christ Church’s Community House) as the enigmatic tale of a girl looking for her notebook unfolded woozily.
Written, directed, and choreographed by Canuso (with Suli Holum) Alice/Canuso’s moves and those of her dancers seemed improvised, but were in fact sharply defined.
“In all my work, there are repeating themes – isolation, desire, and the fabulous mystery of human warmth at its intersection with the cold logic of existence,” says Canuso. “Alice follows this line of research, but includes the audience more directly.”
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