FINDING ALICE (in Wonderland) takes a meta view of the creative process, using Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the ultimate classic on the power of imagination, to explore identity and meaning in art-making.

Choreography and Direction: Jennifer Hart

Script and Concept Collaborator: Kelsey Oliver (with text from Lewis Carroll)

Dancers and Movement Collaborators: Kelsey Oliver, Alexa Capareda, Colin Heino, Taryn Lavery

Costumes and Props Curator: Kelsey Oliver

Score Collaborator: Ritika Bhattacharjee

Lighting Designer and Technical Director: Steven Myers

Portal Designer and Fabricator: Tor Reynolds

Stage Manager and Sound Operator: Elisa Noemí

Jennifer Hart, hailed as a choreographer “with an imagination so exuberant that one could not be sure how one movement led to the next” and “not only inventive but heart-rending,” has been commissioned by Ballet Austin, Ballet Austin ll, Ballet Nouveau Colorado (now Wonderbound), James Sewell Ballet, Minnesota Dance Theater, The Walker Art Center’s Momentum Series, The McKnight Fellowship for Dancers, Metropolitan Ballet Project, University of Kansas, University of Massachusetts, Lawrence Ballet Theatre, Halcyon Dance Project in San Francisco, and Merick Strategies for its production of Leonard Bernstein's “Mass” and “Icons of Broadway Holiday Spectacular.” In July, 2022, Hart was one of four choreographers selected for National Choreographers Initiative.

In 2011, Hart was awarded a New York City Ballet Fellowship and won third place at the Saint-Sauveur International Choreography Competition. She received second place at Ballet Nouveau Colorado’s choreography competition, and was one of three winners of the University of Kansas’ competitive choreography competition. She was chosen three times to present work at Ballet Builders, New Choreographer’s on Point in NYC. She was commissioned by University of Massachusetts in the fall of 2013; the work was chosen for the National College Dance Festival at the Kennedy Center, June 2014.

In 2014, she formed Performa/Dance with Ballet Austin dancer Edward Carr. Performa/Dance launched its inaugural show. Ignite: Three Works, in June, 2014. Her work for Performa/Dance was awarded four Austin Critic’s Table awards for Best Short Work (“On Truth and Love”and "Camille: A Story of Art and Love"), Best Choreographer ("Fellow Travelers" and “Murmuration"), and Best Dance Concert (Ignite: Three Works). Along with her work in concert dance, she has choreographed and performed cabaret shorts for nightclubs and television, and has begun working in video. She recently choreographed and co-directed the epic Bernstein's Mass, a work involving 300 performers.

Kelsey Oliver’s Austin-born butt went from competition kid to drill team baby to experimental academic…currently resonating as a physical theatre enthusiast, improvisor, and momentumous floorwork practitioner. She’s a choreographer, performer, and costume artist, and she loves making artistic funk in whatever medium she can get her hands on. Routinely in scrappy, maximalist, humor-struck collaborations, KO has co-created works with Frank Wo/Men Collective, Rude Mechanicals, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, Performa/Dance, Magdalena Jarkowiec, Heloise Gold, Thee Gay Agenda, Erica Saucedo, Body Shift, + more. She’s ½ of Torko Rover, a multi-medium production duo that is crafting gay performance ahrt in non-traditional spaces. Her costume concoctions and stylings have landed in work by UT’s Fall For Dance, Frank Wo/Men Collective, Erica Saucedo, Heloise Gold, Austin Community College, The Reverie, and many solo & duet works. In academic regards, KO received a B.F.A. in Dance in 2015, studying at the University of Texas at Austin and short-term Le Centre National de Danse Contemporaine in Angers, France. She has been an adjudicator, choreographer, and dance instructor for studios and teams throughout Texas. In a nutshell, she likes durational stuff, absurdist stuff, devised stuff, funny stuff, and stuff that gets soakingly athletic. She also loves her queer family with 5 fur floof children.

Ritika Bhattacharjee is a composer, pianist, and vocalist who performs in jazz combos and big bands, plays for contemporary dance productions and rehearsals with Ventana Ballet and Austin Community Ballet, and underscores fully improvised musicals on piano at Merlin Works Improv, The Hideout, The Fallout, and ColdTowne Theatre. Her multi-media composition portfolio includes the scores for three short films, a video game, an iOS app, a string quartet, a musical, and a symphony commission from Austin Balcones Orchestra. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2022, where she founded and served as the president and conductor of Ingeniare, the A&M Student Engineering Chorus, and served as the band leader and pianist for Binomial Rhapsody, an engineering instrumental ensemble that composed music from math equations. During her undergraduate study, she was the lead jazz vocalist for the Corps of Cadets Aggieland Orchestra, performing scores from the big-band era on tour. She currently works as a business consultant in Austin, TX, and will receive her graduate diploma in composition from the European Academy of Film Scoring in 2024. Bhattacharjee is signed with Graphite Publishing, where her choral compositions are available for purchase.

Alexa Capareda received her early training at the Philippine High School for the Arts in her native Philippines. After moving to Texas, she trained professionally at Ballet Austin. She continued her studies in Canada at Ecole Superieure de Ballet Contemporain de Montreal before joining Mario Radacovsky’s Balet Bratislava in Slovakia, where she had the privilege of performing Jiri Kylian’s Falling Angels and Six Dances. She began exploring her own choreography before leaving Europe, winning 3rd prize at the 2013 Festival of Choreographic Miniatures in Serbia.

Alexa joined Ballet Austin’s artistic staff and Academy faculty in 2015. As Rehearsal Director for Ballet Austin TWO and the Butler Fellows, she restages works for Ballet Austin TWO, has assisted guest choreographers with their commissioned works, and has created original pieces for BA2 and the Butler Fellowship Program. Maria and the Mouse Deer, her new ballet for BA2 based on Philippine folk stories, was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and received seven B. Iden Payne nominations.

Alexa is an artist and Assistant Director with Jennifer Hart's Performa/Dance. She has co-produced and performed with BLiPSWiTCH, Frank Wo/Men, ARCOS, and Collide Arts, and has collaborated with various sound and visual artists. Her choreography been commissioned by SALT Dance (Salt Lake City, UT), Houston Contemporary, Columbia Repertory Ballet, ZACH Theatre, and tbd. dance collective (Omaha, NE), and she has presented work at the Blanton Museum, Big Medium, Austin Dance Festival, Barnstorm Dance Festival, and Fusebox Festival.

In 2017, Alexa received an Austin Critics Table Award for Excellence as a Dancer. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English (with High Honors), and a minor in Theater and Dance from the University of Texas at Austin.

Originally from Plainfield, Illinois, Colin Heino started dancing when he was eight. He discovered his passion for dance through his early dance education at Times III Performing Arts Academy. When Colin was twelve, he began training under Nick Pupillo at Visceral Dance Center in Chicago, Illinois, igniting a deep appreciation for ballet and contemporary movement. Colin later auditioned for the Chicago Academy for the Arts, where he received a scholarship to train under the direction of Randy Duncan and Patrick Simoniello. At the Academy, Colin strengthened his technique by rigorously training in ballet and modern dance. During this time, Colin performed in works by Alvin Ailey, Brian Brooks, Gerald Arpino, Randy Duncan and more. During his summers, Colin expanded his training at the Juilliard School, the Pacific Northwest Ballet School, the Joffrey Academy of Dance, the Royal Ballet School, and the Jacob’s Pillow Contemporary Ballet Program. Colin’s intellectual curiosity and love for dance led him to pursue a BFA at the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, where he graduated in 2023. At USC, Colin performed featured roles in Whereabouts Unknown by Jiří Kylián, In Creases and Rodeo by Justin Peck, Counterpoint by Kyle Abraham, and corps roles in works by Ohad Naharin, William Forsythe, and more. Upon graduating from USC, Colin joined Ballet Austin as a company artist. During his first season, Colin had the opportunity to perform in works by Amy Seiwert and Stephen Mills.

Photo by Cathryn Farnsworth

Taryn Lavery, a Utah native, fuses her classical background with a desire to vitalize modern dance for broader audiences, extracting a new form of contemporary performance. Before moving to Austin in 2011, she attended the University of Alabama on scholarship and worked with Alabama Repertory Dance Theatre, Dance Alabama and Birmingham's Sanspointe Dance Company. Taryn is a founder and co-director of Austin's BLiPSWiTCH, a project-based dance company focused on collaboration and site-specific works as an avenue for community expansion. She works in and out of the studio for BLiPSWiTCH— choreographing, dancing, producing, costume constructing, and graphic designing— to co-conceptualize their seven evening length works to date, their collaborative Offbeat series— now upon its eleventh iteration— and smaller scale works and training opportunities throughout the community. Taryn is a freelance recurring dancer with Jennifer Sherburn and multimedia performance company, ARCOS, and has worked with Kathy Dunn Hamrick Dance Company, Performa/Dance, Collide Arts, SEAM Project, L.O.L.A., Kira Blazek Ziaii, Ready/Set/Go!, Blue Lapis Light, Sky Candy and Cirque Vida; she was also a back-up dancer for bands A Giant Dog and Tinnarose, and has danced in music videos for them, The Band of Heathens, Sweet Spirit, Dr. Joe and more. Taryn is endlessly interested in expanding movement boundaries through BLiPSWiTCH and her work as a dancer and creator with other artists.