LV Contemporary Dance Theater debuts ‘Alice Down the Rabbit Hole’

Tumbling down a rabbit hole can land you in some mighty interesting places.

Wonderland, for one. The Smith Center stage, for another.

Just ask Bernard Gaddis, founder and artistic director of the Las Vegas Contemporary Dance Theater — and choreographer of “Alice Down the Rabbit Hole,” which marks its world premiere Friday at The Smith Center’s Reynolds Hall.

“Alice,” the dance theater’s first full-length ballet, has been in the works since February.

But, in a way, it all started during Gaddis’ boyhood.

That’s when Lewis Carroll’s classic fantasies “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There” — along with John Tenniel’s fanciful illustrations of the same — first captured his imagination.

The spark returned when Gaddis’ mother sent him some favorite books from childhood — and Gaddis, recalling his affection for “Alice,” thought that “maybe I should do a ballet.”

He began choreographing in February, basing “Alice Down the Rabbit Hole” more on Carroll’s original stories than their subsequent movie adaptations.

With “so many different versions, you can find your own voice — and your own version — in the work,” says Gaddis, a former member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater whose “day job” involves dancing and choreographing for Cirque du Soleil.

Such room to maneuver “gave me some freedom,” he says. After all, “if you do ‘Swan Lake,’ people are expecting ‘Swan Lake.’ ”

But with “Alice Down the Rabbit Hole,” there’s plenty of room to challenge audience expectations, whether it’s a tap-dancing Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Adrianna Rosales, Nichole Reyes) or a seen-it-all caterpillar (Eddie Otero) leading Alice (Aida Francesca Garcia) into a sinuous duet.

Other characters springing from the pages of Carroll’s tales range from the madcap Mad Hatter (Matthew Palfenier) and the ever-changeable Cheshire Cat (Avree Walker) to the Red Queen (Marie-Joe Tabet) — “the cause of all the mischief,” Alice announces in Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass” — and her chessboard counterpart, the White Queen (Dempsey Ward).

At a recent rehearsal, Gaddis — decked out in an LVCDT T-shirt proclaiming “Nothing to prove and everything to share” — perches on a chair, watching his dancers at work.

Sitting next to him: composer Martin St. Pierre, a Cirque musician who’s written “Alice’s” sprightly original score. He’s adjusting the computer playback of the score, according to Gaddis’ instructions, as the choreographer observes his dancers at work.

“The hard work is the transitions,” Gaddis notes, “to sew it all together.”

To that end, Gaddis watches Alice and the Tweedles engage in a comical pillow fight — until the choreographer halts them and demonstrates the way he wants Alice to launch her pillow projectile.

“If you’re going to throw a pillow at somebody,” Gaddis says, “throw it!”

Later, after the White Rabbit (Roman J. Pantoja) scampers across the studio floor — growing breathless during a nonstop sequence of hops and twirls — Gaddis steps in to demonstrate the proper pacing and posture.

“I’ll work on it,” Pantoja assures Gaddis.

Throughout rehearsal, the choreographer reminds the dancers that they’ll be performing “Alice Down the Rabbit Hole” very soon — and they need to act, and react, accordingly.

“When I say something is right, don’t continue to constantly change it,” Gaddis instructs. “If you constantly keep changing, we’re never going to get this and it’s always going to be something different.”

Later, he offers another reminder: “The only thing you should worry about is being consistent,” Gaddis says. “You need to start performing this now.”

Unlike some of the works Gaddis has created for the dance theater, “Alice” offers more chances for the dancers to add “more acting elements” to the work, which has a “ballet aesthetic” but uses “a modern dance vocabulary,” he says.

As Gaddis noted during a previous interview, “I’m not a very fluffy person,” so he “wanted to do it in a more contemporary” vein, in “sort of a sleek, modern way,” while maintaining “Alice’s” innate whimsy.

To that end, this “Alice” boasts “a sleek design,” he says, with “actual leather masks.”

Gaddis himself designed the costumes, which were executed primarily by Jessica Agar, with Amanda Coultier (who made the hats), Erina Noda (responsible for the White Queen’s dresses) and Michelle Fraser (who did the dancers’ tights, and the Tweedles’ padded costumes).

The company has rented backdrops and set designs, but John Rohling, a Cirque carpenter, built one key set piece: the Mad Tea Party table.

Despite the elaborate production, scaled for the expansive Reynolds Hall stage, “it’s not quite what I had in my head,” admits Gaddis — who’s also appearing in the ballet as a member of the Red Queen’s henchmen, known collectively as the Royal Flush.

“Due to financial restraints,” he admits, “you have to figure out ways to still get your point across and have it flow.”

Presenting “Alice” at The Smith Center definitely presents a financial challenge, Gaddis acknowledges, but the company’s performances there also have “enhanced” the dance theater’s profile, both locally and nationally, along with increasing “our audience base three times what we were doing before.”

But Gaddis doesn’t have the time, or inclination, to dwell on that while there’s still time to refine his vision of “Alice Down the Rabbit Hole.”

Leading up to Friday’s performance, “I go through a mixture of emotions,” he acknowledges. “I start out by being very excited and the creative mode kind of kicks in” before he needs to “reset my fire. Around this time, I’m hating the ballet. I just want the process to be over.”

But he doesn’t expect that emotion to last much longer.

“I’m tired of it till the curtain comes up,” Gaddis says. “That’s where the joy comes in.”

Contact reporter Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.