Alice In Wonderland Headlines Australian Ballet's 2017 Season

The talented dancers of the Australian Ballet are headed through the looking glass next season with the Australian premiere of British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Premiered by the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in 2011, this dance adaptation of the classic Lewis Carroll fantasy was a huge hit in London. It amplifies the sinister undercurrents of its literary source material with a lavish, kaleidoscopic design aesthetic by Bob Crowley. This vivid and vibrant realisation of a treasured story by one of the world’s most celebrated living choreographers is set to be the company's biggest box office draw of 2017.

Alongside Carroll’s tenacious heroine, Alice, next season's "year of wonders" also champions two other female characters from the canon of story ballet. Graeme Murphy’s Nutcracker – The Story of Clara, offers a unique perspective on the world’s most performed work. This meta-ballet follows a Russian ballerina arriving in Australia to perform in the Christmas classic. A revival of Australian Ballet artistic director David McAllister’s opulent 2015 production of The Sleeping Beauty brings the fairy tale princess Aurora back to the Australian stage, with choreography inspired by the 1889 Marius Petipa original.

McAllister said 2017’s offering was “a season defined by exquisite performance and the adventures of three extraordinary women. We also delve into the bold world of pure physical expression, giving our world-class dancers the chance to test the very limits of human movement, with our contemporary season, Faster.”

Headlining Australian Ballet’s 2017 contemporary program is another import from Covent Garden, by Royal Ballet resident choreographer Wayne McGregor, set to a score by the master of American minimalist music, Steve Reich. David Bintley’s Faster, set to music by Australian composer Matthew Hindson, is an energetic celebration of the Olympic Spirit. The bill is completed by a revival of Tim Harbour’s dark and dynamic 2015 piece, Filigree and Shadow.

Completing 2017’s offer is a work by the father of American ballet, George Balanchine. Symphony in C is a gloriously glossy ode to the glamour and splendour of Hollywood, set to the music of George Bizet.

Australian Ballet's 2017 season is on sale now.