A body lengthened by stilts, another folded through contortion; two chairs whose dimensions unsettle the eye. Wonderland In Alice is a triptych by Emily McDougall and Anastasia Evsigneeva, bringing contemporary dance and circus into a study of scale, physical dependence and altered perception. Its three parts, Wonderland, McDougall’s solo; In, their duet; and Alice, Evsigneeva’s solo, approach a shared question from distinct bodily conditions: how does a change in proportion reorganize our relationship to the world?
The research began in the summer of 2022 through partnering and contact improvisation, with McDougall on stilts and Evsigneeva on the floor. Working with their centres of gravity at different heights required the artists to reconsider familiar ways of sharing weight. On stilts, stillness depends on finding support; each transfer of balance has consequences for both performers. These practical negotiations became the choreographic foundation of the work.
An affinity with Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland emerged through this process. The story surfaces in fragments, as a half-remembered cultural landscape: uncertain identities, improbable encounters and objects that no longer provide a reliable measure of the body. Its influence is felt in the instability of what we see, rather than in a sequence of recognizable episodes.
Scale and perception
In Wonderland, McDougall’s elevated figure negotiates the reach and restrictions of an extended body. Height lends an imposing presence while making ordinary actions precarious. At the same time, the work evokes a sense of nature and the wonder of life itself, as though new sprouts were appearing within Wonderland, small signs of growth, renewal and emergence. In brings the two performers into contact, developing a movement language across their unequal proportions. Here, the title’s middle word becomes a work in its own right: a duet in which the strangeness of Wonderland enters Alice’s perception.
Two chairs, one ordinary in scale and the other oversized, complicate this encounter. Positioned at different depths, they can appear unexpectedly close in size; the performers’ movement towards and away from the audience further unsettles those comparisons. These arrangements produce a subtle psychedelic effect, making apparent growth and contraction a matter of viewpoint. Designed by Evsigneeva and engineered in collaboration with Peter Boulanger of Vancouver’s The Underground Circus, the larger chair serves as both an acrobatic apparatus and a challenge to the room’s apparent dimensions.
Alice
In Alice, Evsigneeva turns this investigation inward. Through contortion, the body folds and redistributes itself, interrupting the familiar correspondence between anatomy and silhouette. These contorted movements are largely the result of Alice’s confusion and her state of derealisation. At times, she has difficulty controlling her body and its movements, causing them to become distorted, involuntary and disorienting, and resulting in the contortion elements that shape the solo. The audience encounters a figure whose physical continuity remains intact even as its outline becomes difficult to read.
Presentations and continuing research
The solos developed with artistic guidance from Isabelle Kirouac for Wonderland and Laurence Racine for Alice. Music by Gary James Joynes / Clinker accompanies the solo works, with a composition by Shelley Bindon for the duet and costumes by Tess Pallister. Presentations in 2024 included Regina’s Stream of Dance Festival, Assiniboine Park in Winnipeg – a free performance as a gesture to acknowledge the land and people, and CCFM, with support from Conseil jeunesse provincial.
The inquiry continues beyond the triptych. Following its creation, McDougall pursued a further solo in which she becomes a table on stilts. She and Evsigneeva are now discussing a furniture series: additional works exploring apartment interiors whose disproportionate furnishings alter how bodies inhabit them. This next phase remains in development, extending their research into the unstable dimensions of domestic space.