Photo by Sarah Annie Navarrete

“What else is there? What else is there in me?” asks Jennifer Hart, choreographer and artistic director for Performa/Dance. “I don’t know if I have anything else to say. That’s always a concern.”

Hart describes her recent artistic journey, FINDING ALICE (IN WONDERLAND)as fulfilling and yet nerve-wracking. The dance – one of four works in PIVOTcomes to Ballet Austin – analyzes the tendency of artists to think too much about their work. PIVOTThe four-performance program, which also features New York City-based Christian Warner and Austin’s own BLiPSWiTCH, premieres August 16 at 7:30 p.m. and August 17 at 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. at Ballet Austin’s AustinVentures StudioTheater.

Hart turned to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland for inspiration, using lines from the novel as a guide for rehearsals. “It’s just about being creative,” Hart said. “It’s nonsensical, you don’t have to make a story out of it. And yet somehow it all makes sense, as it sometimes does in art.”

Austin-born costume designer and choreographer Kelsey Oliver brainstormed with the team to capture the whimsy of Hart’s Wonderland. The artistic director says Oliver brought a wild energy to rehearsals.

“You know those little blue plastic tables for kids?” said Hart. “Kelsey walked up to it, then stood under it and started walking with a table on her back – and it worked!”

In the past, Hart has choreographed to music, but in FIND ALICEshe has taken a new approach: choreographing to text. “It’s a little scary because normally I like to know exactly what the music is going to be like during rehearsals,” Hart said. “But now we’re figuring out that piece of the puzzle towards the end.” After the choreography is complete, composer Ritika Bhattacharjee will add one final crucial aspect to the piece. Bhattacharjee will use music by Yann Tiersen, a French avant-garde musician, and adapt the instrumentals to fit the choreographed work.

Another creative mind following Hart down the rabbit hole is Austin-based dancer Alexa Capareda, associate director of Performa/Dance. Capareda and Hart developed the “morphs” as a tool for audiences to understand when the dancers evolve into the different characters. During rehearsals, experimentation helped Capareda “feel what is right.” Recalling how she came up with the “morph walk,” she said she was tasked with moving like a “cross between a jellyfish and a frog.”

When Capareda joined Ballet Austin in 2007, Hart was her teacher and mentor. After graduating from UT-Austin, she became a full-time dancer and worked with Hart over the years as a rehearsal assistant and choreographer. The two previously worked on Leonard Bernstein’s mass at the Long Center in 2018.

“We understand each other naturally and constantly finish each other’s sentences,” Capareda said. “A lot of my teaching style and approach to ballet comes from her.”

In addition to her work with FIND ALICECapareda will present her first live work for Performa/Dance, a duet entitled cauterization – derived from “cauterize”, which means “to burn the skin”. This piece will represent the human urge to burn oneself and give up in search of freedom. Needless to say, Caparedas cauterization will be a strong contrast to the playful FIND ALICE.

Hart’s works question logic, authority, and her own identity, much like Carroll’s book balances between whimsy and depth. “What does this mean?” and “Why am I doing this?” are some of the questions Hart asks herself during her artistic process, only to find that her art, much like Wonderland, is “completely insane anyway.”

PIVOT

Friday 16th and Saturday 17th, Ballet Austin’s AustinVentures StudioTheater

www.performancedance.org