Eugene Ballet Company to present 'Alice in Wonderland'
Coeur d'Alene Press | UPDATED 15 years, 7 months AGO
<p>Alice in Wonderland will be performed Feb. 27 at 4 p.m. at North Idaho College Schuler's Auditorium.</p>
Alice in Wonderland is coming to Coeur d'Alene.
"The wild, madcap characters from Lewis Carroll's "Alice" come alive as Eugene Ballet Company brings the strangest English Tea Party in History to the stage," according to a press release. "The 'Always Late' White Rabbit, dancing Tea Table, the court of the Queen of Hearts, a crazy croquet game and a lobster quadrille with the Mock Turtle make for a rollicking good time."
A sophisticated ballet for children and grownups, the ballet features Lewis Carroll's poems set to music by English composers. EBC's Alice in Wonderland has been seen across the United States, Canada and Taiwan.
"Alice in Wonderland" is the first half of the show and the second half is "Solo in Nine Part" and "Red Pony."
Jessica Lang's "Solo in Nine Parts" was commissioned by Kansas City Ballet in 2010. The ballet focuses on the simple idea of making the music visible through movement.
Set to Vivaldi's Concerto No. 12 in C, Lang divides the nine solo phrases the violinist plays among the cast of nine dancers. It is an exchange between dancing within a community and becoming the soloist.
The ballet Red Pony was first created in the spring of 2002 for the Oregon Festival of American Music in Eugene, Ore., and performed by the Eugene Ballet Company with the OFAM orchestra under the direction of James Paul.
The original music was written by Aaron Copland for the movie The Red Pony and was based on the John Steinbeck novel of the same name. However the ballet does not follow the original storyline but simply represents horses in their most basic, wild form. It does reference the title, however, with one mischievous red pony.
The ballet is in eight movements for nine dancers and is accompanied by projected images of horses, domestic and wild, in fields and moors, grazing and active. The images were painted by local visual artist, Nadya Geras-Carson.
Le Danse studio in Coeur d'Alene owned by Debi Terracciano is a sponsor of the performance.
She believes it will be a wonderful time to take the family to the theater on a Sunday afternoon and see a live performance instead of sitting home in the cold of winter.
"I want to make dance performances available to my students and any other local dancer so they will be inspired and want to continue dancing and dance better themselves," she wrote.
EBC is the same group that performed The Nutcracker during the holidays, so "Alice" will be a quality show, Terracciano said.
Eight local teens are in the program, along with three girls who will play a young Alice's sisters.
The first half of the show is about 50 minutes. Solo in Nine Parts will run 15 minutes and Red Pony about 25 minutes.
"It will be great music and great dancing," Terracciano said.
The performance is set for Feb. 27 at 4 p.m. at North Idaho College Schuler Auditorium performing arts center. Tickets are $25 for adults and $10 for children 18 and under.