Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Christopher Wheeldon, OBE is one of today’s most influential choreographers working across ballet, theater, and musical theater. Trained at The Royal Ballet School, he danced with The Royal Ballet and New York City Ballet, where he became the company’s first Resident Choreographer in 2001. His work has been commissioned by many of the world’s leading ballet companies, including The Royal Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Mariinsky Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and Hamburg Ballet.

Wheeldon is the creator of acclaimed full-length ballets such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Winter’s Tale, Cinderella, Like Water for Chocolate, and most recently Oscar© for The Australian Ballet. Beyond ballet, he directed and choreographed Broadway’s An American in Paris and MJ the Musical, earning multiple Tony and Olivier Awards. Wheeldon is recognized for his distinctive voice, blending classical tradition with theatrical imagination and contemporary storytelling.

Joby Talbot’s richly imaginative score is central to the storytelling of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He weaves recurring musical themes throughout the ballet to create a sense of journey, giving each character their own distinct sound world. From the rhythmic exuberance that supports the Mad Hatter’s tap-dancing to the subtle nod to Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty in the Queen of Hearts’ garden, Talbot’s music constantly deepens the narrative. To evoke Wonderland’s magic, he employs an expansive percussion section and an array of unusual instruments, building a soundscape that is playful, mysterious, and cinematic in scope.

Bob Crowley brings Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to life with extraordinary imagination and theatrical flair. For this production, Crowley conceived both sets and costumes, creating a visual world that fully immerses audiences in Wonderland’s magic. His designs reinterpret Carroll’s fantastical story through vibrant color, inventive structures, and surprising visual effects.

Costumes range from elegant period-inspired attire to playful and exaggerated character pieces, enhancing each figure’s personality and movement onstage. Crowley’s work also incorporates puppetry and projection alongside traditional scenic elements, allowing Wonderland to feel both richly textured and deeply theatrical. His design creates not just a backdrop for the ballet but a dynamic, ever-shifting world that engages the imagination and invites audiences into the heart of Alice’s adventure.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, first published in 1865, has enchanted generations with its playful logic, vivid characters, and dreamlike structure. Born from a story Carroll invented for a young Alice Liddell, the novel unfolds as a series of surreal encounters, less a traditional plot than a cascade of fantastical episodes. Its imaginative freedom, visual richness, and eccentric cast have made it one of the most adapted works in literary history, while its deeper themes of identity, time, and transformation continue to resonate with readers of all ages.

For Christopher Wheeldon, Alice offered the perfect foundation for a modern story ballet. He was drawn to the book’s episodic nature, which allowed him to shift fluidly between worlds, characters, and movement styles. While aiming to remain faithful to Carroll’s universe, Wheeldon and dramatist Nicholas Wright shaped a clearer theatrical journey for the stage, creating a dramatic arc that unfolds entirely through movement. In doing so, they addressed a long-standing challenge of adapting Alice for dance: how to transform a collection of whimsical scenes into an emotionally satisfying voyage.

The transition from page to stage became a deeply collaborative process. Wheeldon worked closely with composer Joby Talbot and designer Bob Crowley to determine not only how Wonderland should look and sound, but how long moments should breathe—how long Alice should fall down the rabbit hole, how scenes should melt into one another, and how illusion could be created through human craft as much as technology. Projections, puppetry, tap dance, and classical ballet coexist, reflecting Wheeldon’s desire to create a theatrical, crossover work that honors tradition while embracing invention.

What emerges is not a literal translation of the novel, but a reimagining of its spirit. Carroll’s wordplay gives way to physical storytelling; his absurdity becomes movement, rhythm, and design. Through dance, music, and visual magic, Alice’s tumble into Wonderland becomes an immersive journey—one that invites audiences not just to observe the fantasy, but to enter it.