TOPSHAM

It was only days after last year’s show while on a road trip to Ohio that ballet instructor Elizabeth Drucker got the idea for this year’s show — which hits the stage at the Orion Performing Arts Center May 2 and May 3.

The Ballet School in Topsham will present Alice in Wonderland, an original production staged and professionally choreographed by Drucker that will display some of the school’s significant talent. Drucker, a former dancer with New York City Ballet, chose many different composers to set the mood of the ballet.

“The music is very relevant in this production,” she said. “It helps Alice make sense of Wonderland’s unusual characters and brings humor and heart to the show.

“The idea of having a story to work with was interesting to me and seemed like a challenge,” Drucker added. It wasn’t immediate that she settled on Alice in Wonderland, but “all of a sudden,” it clicked. She knew longtime student Madeleine Walker- Elders loved Lewis Carroll, who wrote “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and knew Walkers-Elders would make a perfect Alice.

She began running through other parts and by the time she returned from the roadtrip, she had already conceptualized many of the ideas and music selection that would become the production her ballet dancers have immersed themselves in since January.

“It’s been really, really fun, from the first rehearsal,” Drucker said. “It’s such great material, and while at first it seemed daunting to try to turn a story that’s so much about dialogue and verbal humor and verbal word play — into something that was so physical.”

But then it made sense to her.

“I realized that words — we’re just dancing,” Drucker said. “A conversation becomes a duet.”

So while challenging, “it was amazing when it started to work,” Drucker said. “Every member of the cast has really embraced their roles and their part in the ballet so every part feels significant to me,” because of the work they’ve done.

A show is characterized as a story ballet for all ages, it aims to be accessible to all.

“I feel really strongly that people should be able to come to any ballet and just really enjoy it and not need to know anything about ballet,” Drucker said. “Sometimes ballet gets so caught in itself and I just wanted to do something that anybody can come to,” without knowing anyone in the cast or classical music, so that “it grabs them.”

Madeleine Walker-Elders, 16, of Lisbon Falls leads a cast of more than 90 dancers. She has been dancing ballet for 12 years and said when she started to dance, she felt she could express herself in a way she couldn’t through speaking.

“I really felt like I could feel things through dance that I couldn’t necessarily without it,” Walker-Elders said.

The senior at Catherine McAuley High School said it takes a lot of dedication to be a ballet dancer, and “you have to be very self-aware and very committed.”

She doesn’t know who she’d be without dance. It is the first time the ballet school has done a story ballet in a couple of years, and Walker-Elders was both excited and scared when told she’d be playing the lead role of Alice because there is a lot of pressure to play such an iconic role and do it justice. She read Alice in Wonderland as a child and it was her sister’s favorite book, so the story was very much a part of her childhood.

She enjoys those moments when she relaxes into the role and really feels she is Alice.

“I think it’s absolutely amazing to be another person for a little while and see the world through her eyes and go on this journey as Alice,” Walker-Elders said.

She is sure the audience will enjoy the show.

“Watching a ballet, it’s hard not to get swept up with it, especially with this story line which is well known so I think it’s easy to follow,” Walkr-Elders said.

Even through a busy high school schedule tempted with many after school clubs and activities, Walker-Elders chose and has made time for ballet. In the fall she’ll attend Drexel University for architectural engineering where she plans to minor in dance.

“I think you just really have to love to dance,” Walker Elders said. “You have to love the feeling and love the struggle and love to lose yourself in it, and that’s what it really takes. LOVE.”

Dressed in her little leotard and tights, Caroline Gill, 15, of Bowdoinham used to practice ballet in her living room as a small child with the help of a VHS video. She started at Drucker’s Ballet School at age 5 and never stopped. She currently plans to become a professional ballet dancer.

Last week as she rehearsed, she would rise onto toes with arms and fingers outstretched. The pointe shoes are a rite of passage for a ballet dancer, Gill said, which you wear only after you’ve been dancing consistently and built up a lot of strength and control.

“It’s so beautiful and I prefer dancing on point than on top shoes even though it can be more painful,” Gill said. “There’s nothing else in the world that does that. It makes it really unique.”

She’s heard people say that pointe shoes bring you closer to flying and even closer to Heaven, “and I like to think of that when it’s painful.”

Last year Gill opted to be homeschooled which allowed her to spend more time at the ballet school. She may attend a ballet school in New York or Seattle her sophomore or junior year. She is bound this summer for The School of American Ballet in New York City, which is very presti- gious and selective. She auditioned in Boston and was excited to learn she was accepted — especially after she was rejected last year. She attended a Pacific Northwest Valley summer course in Seattle last summer which helped her improve. She’s excited to go to New York for the summer at a school she’d like to potentially attend next school year or the year after.

“To dance in New York would be a dream come true,” Gill said.

She plays three parts in the ballet: The Duchess, the duck and the lead card. The production is entertaining and is full of color and the story line she feels allows the dancers to embody their characters better.

“I think what’s unique about this is anyone can come and get something out of watching it,” without knowing anything about ballet, Gill said. “Ballet is a good way to illustrate stories in a different way than people are used to.”

Ellie Dickson, 15, is a freshman at North Yarmouth Academy. She’d dance around the house so her mother enrolled her in ballet at 3 and a half. Ballet is a way for her to express herself. She plays a mouse, March Hare and Queen of Hearts. As March Hare she gets to make people laugh and then as Queen of Hearts, she is commanding, which takes her out of her safe zone.

Dickson is headed to Kansas City this summer for ballet training, and for her, spending the summer dancing is a dream.

Isabel Kovacs is 16 and lives in Bath where she attends Morse High School as a junior. She started dancing at age 4.

“I can’t really imagine doing anything else at this point. I just love it,” she said.

As opposed to competition sports, ballet is more about competing against yourself because, “you’re trying to better yourself. It’s just this need for improvement and to come in each day saying ‘I’m going to do this better than I did it yesterday and I’m going to be stronger than I was the day before.’… You’re challenging yourself each day.”

“And it’s also just such a beautiful art form and way of expressing yourself,” Kovacs said.

It is a place where dancers can focus on themselves for a little while each day. There’s a lot of determination and discipline involved and “you have to want to improve; you have to want to dance. I need to dance. It’s just who I am.”

Kovacs spent last summer at Kansas City Ballet and is headed back this summer. She plans to attend college but wants to be able to dance and possibly join a ballet company while in college.

“I would love to dance professionally,” Kovacs said.

She’s never had to find a character so much as in the Alice in Wonderland production. She plays The Mad Hatter, “which is kind of a crazy person,” making the character hard to tap into. She also plays the Dodo Bird and for those happy scenes has to change her mindset.

“The costumes and the props are beautiful, the characters are funny and I think it’s just going to be a really beautiful show,” Kovacs said. It always is, “but I think this is going to be very special.”

 

 

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