The ballet Alice, is an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Yana Lewis started teaching classical ballet in Bengaluru in 1999 and started The Lewis Foundation Of Classical Ballet in 2006. She has now choreographed a ballet Alice, which is an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This will be presented by students of her foundation this weekend.
Why Alice? Yana responds: “I always wanted to do Alice. This production is my adaptation of the classic and created a very simple version of dance. Alice, is originally a complicated story with many characters and so many things happening. I wanted to present something very child-friendly and child-centric, keeping the presentation simple and not make the narration confusing. All this is there in the book already, in fact much more,” says Yana, who adds: “Over the years, we have had many versions of Alice, including the first Disney version to Alice through the Looking Glass, but I felt it was all complicated and un child- friendly. My choreography is aimed at creating a wonderland that children can perceive. Hence, I played with my imagination to see how my version of Alice falls, through dance.”
She says Alice will not be classical ballet per se, “as it can be quite abstract. We have used modern ballet with some contemporary moves. Our children here get so few opportunities to see ballet. We had not had a show since 2019 due to the pandemic. Normally all our shows are for NGOs. This time, we decided to open it out to the public too,” states Yana, who says that most of her dancers/performers for the show are from the foundation’s outreach programme.
“We normally do our shows for 1200 NGO children and even provide them with transportation as some of them live way outside the city. These children come, watch the show, have dinner and then go back,” she says and states the reason for her passion to keep the outreach programme going with: “You can not be something more than what you know if you do not dream or aspire to it. Aspiration comes from exposure. Watching TV, for me, is not a dream or aspiration. But, a live production does transport you into another world. There is so much energy in creating and magic in creating something. I wanted to give our outreach children a platform to know that this dream can be a reality for them.”
Her foundation, she states, has not only provided a space for children to learn ballet and also give scholarships. “One of our lead dancers in Alice is from our outreach programme. His name is Tejas and he has been with us ever since six and today is 19. He dances and also helps us with the production and dance school”.
She also adds that some of the outreach students are studying and dancing in Germany. “I believe what comes in goes out and we give back. That is how life works.”
Having lived in Bengaluru for decades, Yana calls it “my city too now” and observes that ballet as a dance has grown by leaps and bounds in the city. “When I first started, only contemporary dancers would come to me to add movement vocabulary from ballet into their dances. But, today, we have people from all walks of life and age learning ballet. We see footfalls from a six year old to a 60 year old in class.”
Alice, with 180 plus performers, will be staged on December 16. This show is an extension of the outreach programme of the foundation, is free and is exclusively for children from various NGOs across the city.
The show is on December 17 at BR Ambedkar Bhavan, Vasanth Nagar, at 12.30 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. Tickets available on PayTM Insider.