“How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!”
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

It is the power of imagination which makes man free. Free to creep into a rabbit hole and encounter the strangest creatures. Free to shift our size and shape. Free to act out our fears and fantasies. Free to think and feel just what we like.
If anyone gave expression to this exhilarating, anarchic freedom it was Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. His masterpiece of 1865 – which is by no means exclusively a children's novel – has fascinated generations of readers and keeps inspiring artists of any genre to produce their own Alice interpretations.

The Italian star choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti is also ready to follow the white rabbit. His full-length piece Alice will see its world première at Theaterhaus Stuttgart in June 2014, in cooperation with Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, one of Germany's most prolific dance companies.

Bigonzetti is attracted by the hallucinatory atmosphere of Alice, the game of infinite possibilities, images, sounds and incidents. He wants to explore this curious, topsy-turvy world together with the marvellous dancers of Gauthier Dance and has already found his ideal leads – in the plural typical of Bigonzetti – for the title role. The choreographer frequently casts several performers for one part in order to work out the different aspects of a character. A concept which goes particulary well with Alice as both the novel and the personage oscillate between comedy and drama, between the fear of the otherworld and the amusement at its whimsical inhabitants.

With her strong technique, sensitive stage presence and flaming red hair, company member Anna Süheyla Harms seems predestined for the adventures in Bigonzetti's Wonderland. The more so as she was recently awarded a most prestigious seal of approval: In a glamorous gala at Schiller Theater Berlin, Anna Harms received the German Theatre Prize THE FAUST 2013 in the category Performer Dance. She is joined on stage by Garazi Perez Oloriz who is to dance the “serious” Alice. After all, she more than proved her suitability for dramatic roles right in her very first season with Gauthier Dance when she charmed both the audience and Emperor Nero as the scheming but irresistible lead in Christian Spuck's POPPEA//POPPEA.

The artistic partners at Bigonzetti's side share a long history with him – the set and light designer Carlo Cerri and a seasoned musical team: As composers and eventually live on stage, Antongiulio Galeandro, Enza Pagliara and the fabulous singers of Assurd – Cristina Vetrone, Enza Prestia und Lorella Monti – will draw on the diverse heritage of authentic, raw folk music to bring true passion to the theatre, just like they did in the successful Bigonzetti-Gauthier Dance production Cantata. Except that the musicians will play an even bigger part as performers than in Cantata.

The realm of fantasy Bigonzetti has in mind will be as intense and rough as the music. No softened, poetic dreamspace but solid, tangible, if dislocated reality. Bizarre, frightening, enchantingly beautiful, surprising and overwhelming. It is thus no wonder but only logical that Bigonzetti hopes his audience will feel that they are witnesses to real actions – albeit actions on the other side of the looking-glass...

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