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2019 · Dance – stage work

Alice in Californiland

Arthur Pita · AXIS Dance Company

A dance-theater work for AXIS Dance Company that sets Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland against the Bay Area's homelessness and addiction crisis. Alice appears in two versions, her real circumstances and a drug-induced dream, alongside characters from Carroll's story.

Recollections

“I always appreciate when someone brings the darkness, and Arthur came into this piece with a really strong vision. It was fun to only focus on sound design and leave the composition to the dead white guys.

I remember coaching Arthur and telling him he was allowed to boss the sound engineer around and turn the music up past the point of comfort sometimes.

It was originally called Alice in Oakland, and I was a little sad about the name change. I thought it did a great job of illustrating the messy complexity of modern Bay Area urban life.

This piece was so rad. AXIS Dance is a very special company. I miss those days…”

Ben
Premiere
2019-10-25
Venue
Z Space (AXIS Dance Company 2019 home season, In·ter·twine, co-presented by Z Space)
Where
San Francisco, CA
Performances
Z Space run Oct 25–27, 2019. Online screening with Q&A hosted by AXIS on Dec 5, 2020 (per AXIS e-mail).
Credits
Direction/choreography: Arthur Pita. Sound design/music: Ben Juodvalkis (arthurpita.com credit; the score also used existing recordings such as Ravel's La Valse). Set/costume design: Yann Seabra. Lighting design: Allen Willner. Production manager: Wally Holden. Dancers: Yuko Monden Juma (Alice), Lani Dickinson (Alice in the drug-induced state), AJ Guevara, JanpiStar, Demarco Sleeper. AXIS Artistic Director: Marc Brew; Executive Director: Robin Anderson. Shared bill with works by Jennifer Archibald and Robert Dekkers. Production photography: David DeSilva. Touring production manager: Max Urruzmendi. Operations manager: Danika Ingraham. Z Space technical director: Joe Moore. Community research partners: Martin de Porres House of Hospitality; Coalition on Homelessness.

Photographs

Promotional graphic for AXIS Dance Company’s in·ter·twine season: three dancers, one of them in a wheelchair, posed in a leaning cluster against a white background, with the word “in·ter·twine” set across them in outlined pink letters.

AXIS Dance Company

Ephemera

Arthur Pita sits on a folding chair in a dance studio, one arm outstretched as he gives a note; AXIS dancers sit on the marley floor around him, one of them in a wheelchair, and a laptop running an Ableton Live session is open on a table in the foreground.

Arthur giving notes on my first day in the studio.

Dancers in a rehearsal studio spread a large blue plastic tarp across the floor; one rises from beneath it with an arm thrust straight up, others crouch at its edges, and one works from a wheelchair.

The tarp, from my video of a run-through.

A performer in a shaggy pink coat and a flamingo mask walks in heels across a blue tarp spread over a studio floor, while another dancer's head emerges from beneath the tarp behind them.

The flamingo's entrance, from rehearsal video.

A wheelchair piled high with flattened cardboard on a darkened stage lit in magenta; a performer beside it raises a hand-lettered sign reading “I USED TO BE YOUR NEIGHBOR” while another lies on a painted floorcloth downstage and crew work at the edges of the set.

Tech week, with the set onstage.

Arthur's first reply to me, when AXIS introduced us.

Arthur: Apologies on delayed response, I am full on in rehearsals on a new show and you know ….. crazzzzzzy ! This sounds like a good plan to kick start us off. Lets get with this and see how it cooks

Press

“I'm working with a sound designer and we've broken up the track to take the audience into the world.”

“After experiencing the mixed discipline work, I can say that Californiland is a poetic, profound, moving piece of Dance Theater.”

DanceTabs · Heather Desaulniers · 2019-10-27

Elsewhere

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