More Rehearsal Pictures: Alice In Wonderland

A Document of Rehearsals For My First Ballet Choreography

Alice In Wonderland

Only photos of the senior group have been taken due to obtaining permission.

These photos are the "dream scene" which is part of the street ballet section towards the end of act 2. The music is Sweet Dreams by Eurhythmics.

Another Project On The Go: Alice In Wonderland Ballet

The beginning of the dream scene, where Alice has "had enough"
The end section of Alice in Wonderland where Alice is ending her adventure.

I am currently choreographing my first ever ballet for YEM Theatre School with around 40 children. You may remember my Alice in Wonderland posts from a while back, when I was in the research of ideas and themes and characters. Rehearsals are now well under way but still have a long way to go.

The music was my first starting point. So, iTunes was an absolute must to download music, but also Spotify to test it out and listen to it first. Of course being me, I didn't just look for classical music, I searched through a few themes and ideas to collect my final play list. I have incorporated tracks from Madonna, De Bussy, Hartly and Eurythmics so as you can tell; quite a diverse range. I integrated tracks to create my story line and cut the music accordingly. I now have a two act ballet of four minutes per act. From past shows ballet has always been the slow down for a fast paced show, but not this year I hope. Especially since this is the first ballet to include "street ballet"!

I took some photos of rehearsals in action (with permission) just to document the work taking place. I am working with five different classes. Each group meanders around the choreography I just hope it will work once all dancers are put together. Not only have I got the five ballet classes, but also three jazz groups to build up numbers (as we lost some students after the last unethical teacher).

The Challenges of Choreography

You may have seen my gathered images for Alice in Wonderland, well I am pleased to say that the choreography is well under way. As this is first BALLET choreography I have done, I accepted early on it wouldn't be easy.

There's been a lot of problems within the ballet end of the school due to the teacher before me stealing students and leaving me; the new teacher with next to none - good luck creating a work-of-art ballet Lucy!

Never the less, I overcame that problem by borrowing other students from the school to bulk it up a bit (though the students don't know this yet!) The principals have agreed due to the circumstances and I am allowed to do so.

However this has somehow started something. School's tend to thrive with little ones learning music and dance, and occasionally stream into a few less in each class as the students get older. So the principals want the youngest (non-ballet) school members which are between the ages of 1 and 3 to be in much more.

Oh let's ask Lucy to put them in the ballet!!!.........

I'll keep you posted!

Alice In Wonderland - My New Choreography Project Research

Alice in Wonderland

Ballet Choreography for ages 4 to 17

Resources - youtube, iTunes, Google, Film, Album, Story

Ideas and research so far:

Above Image - an old style picture, bright colourful, attracting young audiences. Based on the original Walt Disney animations and characters. It features Alice, Rabbit, a bread butterfly and other strange woodland characters.

Image Below - my favourite image, a stylised busy and beautiful image of a make believe world.

Very detailed design, with depth and colour. Highlighting themes of flowers and wonder.

Below, a remixed track from Alice that's very unique and a bit different. As I am more jazz based dancer in my training, I would like a section of my choreography to have more of a jazz/ballet style in there to a less classical piece of music such as this.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) is a novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym by Lewis Carroll . It is about the story of a girl who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world inhabited by strange and wonderful creatures.