Well, what an appropriate ballet for our times is ALICE (in wonderland) – a Mad Hatter’s tea party, a rambunctious Red Queen with a propensity to yell “Off with their heads!”, a White Rabbit darting in and out of affairs, and a house of cards that comes tumbling down.

Not too difficult to guess who’s who in this 21st-century adaptation of a 19th-century story about a chaotic world inhabited and ruled by odd and tyrannical figures, into which falls a young and perplexed girl called Alice.

Nowadays, of course, there are many Alices (and Alans) who are bewildered by how they came to be living so impotently within a world run by similarly odd and tyrannical people. And come to think of it, how amazed would Alice’s author, Lewis Carroll, be to be told that he had envisaged the state of world affairs two centuries later?

ALICE (in wonderland). Photo © Sergey Pevnev

ALICE (in wonderland) is a co-production of the West Australian Ballet and the Hong Kong Ballet, choreographed by Septime Webre, Artistic Director of the latter. It features...