Alice, by HANATSUmiroir

Born in 2010 out of the meeting of percussionist Olivier Maurel and flautist Ayako Okubo, HANATSUmiroir symbolises all the curiosity, inventiveness and permeability of concrete and contemporary musical practices. The multifaceted and inventive Strasbourg-based ensemble brings together a host of musicians, dancers, set designers and visual artists for its experimental projects. Here, the style only serves to enhance the substance. This eclecticism has yielded pieces inspired by poetry, literature, the visual arts and experimental music, such as De l’air et de la gravité, a dreamlike journey composed in 2017 around mythological figures, Wis & Ramin, a 2015 adaptation of Gurgani’s text, and Echoplasme (2019), an enchanted ballad born out of a collaboration with the musician, composer and visual artist ErikM.

HANATSUmiroir’s second piece for young audiences after La Vallée des merveilles, Alice is a visual and auditory showcase for Lewis Carroll’s extravagant work. The novel that recounts the adventures of a young girl in a world filled with imagination has a fantastical quality ripe for visual and musical reinterpretation. A highly influential novel in the Victorian period, Alice in Wonderland continues to inspire the most experimental of pieces.

Opting for a form close to musical theatre, this piece for soprano, flutes, clarinets, cello and double bass, composed by Ole Hübner, the winner of the last Stuttgart composition competition, draws on a modular scenic world to offer a large-scale mapping of wonderland. Created by Kapitolina Tcvetkova-Plotnikova, this set enables HANATSUmiroir to perpetuate its aim of deconstructing the traditional listening experience. Joined by the German soprano Frauke Aulbert, the ensemble continue their meditative work.

Known for the way it plays with images, logic and language, Carroll’s work is perfectly honoured here by the Franco-German actor, director and playwright Jürgen Genuit. The texts, which playfully blend German with French, immerse spectators in the role of Alice, allowing her to explore her wonderfully absurd surroundings with the help of musical, visual and olfactory elements. In doing so, it recreates the humour and strangeness of Alice in Wonderland and offers a resolutely one-of-a-kind show.