{"id":241809,"date":"2025-09-20T16:17:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T16:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/241809\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T16:17:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T16:17:11","slug":"fort-worth-symphony-adds-bruce-wood-dance-for-brilliant-alice-in-wonderland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/241809\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Worth Symphony adds Bruce Wood Dance for brilliant \u2018Alice in Wonderland\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

FORT WORTH \u2014 That\u2019s the most fun I\u2019ve had at a symphony concert in I don\u2019t know when. <\/p>\n

Fort Worth Symphony<\/a> music director Robert Spano has made a point of enhancing some concerts with visual components. On Friday night\u2019s FWSO program, Lewis Carroll\u2019s fanciful Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland was brilliantly and wittily brought to life with dancers from Bruce Wood Dance Dallas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The music was a suite from British composer Joby Talbot\u2019s 2010 score for a full-length ballet originally choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon for London\u2019s Royal Ballet. The 40-minute suite presented at Bass Performance Hall was choreographed by Joy Bollinger, with dazzling costumes by Tommy Bourgeois and deft lighting by Krista Billings.<\/p>\n

The orchestra, led by Spano, performed upstage with stand lights, with dancing on a forward stage extension. Minus dancers, Mozart\u2019s Prague Symphony was presented on the concert\u2019s first half. <\/p>\n

News Roundups<\/p>\n

Catch up on the day’s news you need to know.<\/p>\n

By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n

Talbot, best known for movie and TV scores, has been well represented around here. The Dallas Opera commissioned and premiered his operas Everest <\/a>and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly<\/a>, and the FWSO previously did his Guitar Concerto.<\/p>\n

Talbot\u2019s Alice favors shifting minimalist patterns of pulsings, tinklings, offbeat punctuations and up-and-down melodic gestures. But they\u2019re overlaid in sometimes complex textures.<\/p>\n

The orchestration, done in collaboration with Christopher Austin, makes much of bright, shiny colors and tangy effects, with generous applications of tuned percussions \u2014 even a howling ram\u2019s horn. Some wordless vocalises were supplied by offstage singers from the Austin choral ensemble Conspirare. <\/p>\n

Costumes were obviously inspired by John Tenniel\u2019s beloved Alice illustrations. Stephanie Godsave looked very much like Tenniel\u2019s Alice; Lauren Hibbard was immediately recognizable as the White Rabbit and the virtuosically athletic Cole Vernon as the Mad Hatter. A number of playing-card characters were represented, notably Megan Storey\u2019s imperious Queen of Hearts (though far slenderer than Tenniel\u2019s!) and Seth York as the Knave of Hearts.<\/p>\n

Weaver Rhodes and Elliott Trahan were fore and aft of the enormous \u2014 and surprisingly nimble \u2014 Cheshire Cat, with gleaming eyes and teeth. Mackenzie Meldrum and Geneive Robinson were wittily done up as flamingos.<\/p>\n

Spano and the orchestra made a delightful case for the music. I can pretend at no authority on dance, but the choreography was unflaggingly imaginative \u2014 and quite demanding \u2014 and its execution validated the high reputation of the Bruce Wood company. The whole experience was delightful start to finish, although I did wish for supertitles to identify the nine movements.<\/p>\n

Mozart\u2019s symphonies were mainly composed for what we\u2019d consider chamber orchestras, but Spano favored a big-band approach to the Prague. Violins played with impressive precision and tonal finesse, but trumpets were repeatedly too loud, as were horns a couple of times. (Eighteenth-century trumpets were much gentler than modern ones, just adding a slight gleam in orchestral ensembles.)<\/p>\n

All three movements were smartly paced and shaped, but the music wanted a lighter touch and more transparency.<\/p>\n

Details<\/p>\n

Repeats at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at Bass Performance Hall, Fourth and Commerce streets, Fort Worth. $39.50 to $146.30. 817-665-6000, fwsymphony.org.<\/p>\n

\"Hip<\/a>Fort Worth theater shelves play due to \u2018recent high profile events\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Hip Pocket Theatre was planning to present an adaptation of Mary Shelley\u2019s \u201cFrankenstein.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Zachary<\/a>North Texas Giving Day sees record participation as nonprofits face funding challenges<\/a><\/p>\n

Over 3,600 nonprofits are participating in the 17th annual event to support the region<\/p>\n

\"Joe<\/a>Review: Shakespeare\u2019s King Lear turned into fried chicken mogul in new Dallas show<\/a><\/p>\n

The Echo Theatre production manages to adapt the tragedy into an often uproarious comedy while staying mostly faithful to the original.<\/p>\n

\"Omar<\/a>\u2018It\u2019s very special\u2019: Actor revels in lead role in bilingual \u2018Taming of the Shrew\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Omar Padilla is thrilled that his immigrant mother can follow the story in Shakespeare Dallas\u2019 new play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT WORTH \u2014 That\u2019s the most fun I\u2019ve had at a symphony concert in I don\u2019t know when.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":241810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,1576,7371,40272,7372,7260,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-241809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-classical-music","10":"tag-fort-worth","11":"tag-fort-worth-symphony-orchestra","12":"tag-fortworth","13":"tag-performing-arts","14":"tag-texas","15":"tag-tx","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115237528994901503","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}