Alice in Wonderland, written by Lewis Carroll, also known as Charles Dodgson, was originally written as a fantastic tale for a young girl named Alice Liddell whom the writer became very taken with.

Carroll’s famous book developed as he narrated Alice’s adventures impromptu to children, playing at a picnic, making up the entire story as he went along.

As he invented each scene, Carroll sketched the scenes and characters on a pad of paper and the children played out the fantasy.

When it suddenly began to rain and the picnic was interrupted, Alice Liddell, daughter of the Dean of the Church of Oxford, where Carroll was employed, begged the story-teller to finish the story so all the children could resume the re-enactment in their play.

Carroll recollected some years later how “in a desperate attempt to strike out some new line of fairy-lore, I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole, to begin with, without the last idea of what was to happen afterwards.”

Carroll’s improvisational story-telling unfolded on the bank of the Thames River one July Sunday in England and over time, the book has provoked interesting feminist and psychoanalytic readings of Alice’s character in relation to Carroll’s own person.

The result has been a thoughtful adventure story that can be appreciated by a wide audience in many other formats, such as the upcoming ballet.

Pat Brown and Stephanie Freeman’s Alice in Wonderland, is a masterpiece ballet extraordinaire! The work will certainly please both youthful members of the audience while at the same time, intriguing the most sophisticated connoisseurs of the choreographic art.

This will be accomplished through approximately one hundred dancers performing both classical and contemporary ballet as well as incorporating a few “surprises” for the audience.

Over the last thirty-four years, Ballet Arts, Inc. has raised the standard and repertoire of the company and this year’s bill promises to cater for many tastes.

The hundreds of elaborate costumes and over a thousand costume pieces will add well to Alice’s fantasy. The costuming follow some of the original illustrations quite closely, adding color and creativity to the black and white sketches.

Working almost “around the clock” it is the original costuming decisions by head seamstress, Kay Fox and her large crew, which will be the most obviously appreciated by the entire audience.

When concentrating on the visual elements of this story, much of the richness of Alice and her dialogue with the characters she meets and their personality traits, may at first glance, appear to get lost as inevitably the focus is shifted from a language to a movement genre.

However, in Ballet Arts, Inc.’s version, Alice becomes a nicer young girl than Carroll envisaged in his story. Alice is not so intent on arguing with, for example, Humpty Dumpty when he informs her that her name is stupid because it doesn’t mean anything. Instead Alice becomes a child lost in an extraordinary world, the dreamscape of Carroll, which is strange and perplexing to this young girl.

The dancer playing Alice in this performance, Mary Schoenbachler, will carry this character well in her tremendous experience as a dancer.

One will see interesting choreography through the fascinating moments and interactions with the various characters, such as the Caterpillar, the Mad Hatter, and the March Hare. Of course, the adults have their own version of what is essential to Alice in Wonderland, as this timeless classic unleashes childhood memories, bringing to life the fantasy once only inspired by words alone.

Alice promises to take you beyond the classic fairy tale in terms of cleverness, humor and originality as one will leave the ballet with a bit of a Cheshire cat’s grin.

The ballet will open at the Carl Perkins Civic Center in Jackson, Tennessee, Saturday evening, April 5th, at 7:00 p.m. A second performance will follow at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 6th. For ticket information call Special Occasions at 668-3240.