MOMIX turns stage into a wonderland with its wildly imaginative ‘Alice,’ at NJPAC in Newark

The title character becomes a giant spider at one point in MOMIX’s “Alice.”

Choreographer Moses Pendleton never came upon a rabbit hole that didn’t tempt him. So inevitably, one day he reached the bend in the river where, in 1862, a mathematician who signed himself Lewis Carroll began to tell the whimsical stories we know as “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Pendleton’s “Alice” (2019) — a contemporary riff on this children’s classic and its sequel, “Through the Looking Glass” — played to a full house, Jan. 26 at Prudential Hall at NJPAC in Newark, where his company, MOMIX, led viewers into a world of mind-bending illusions.

Whatever Pendleton and Carroll may have in common, they belong to different centuries, so no one should expect a staged version of Carroll’s nonsense plot in which animals speak in Victorian accents, oddball characters quite sure of themselves support their arguments with dubious logic, and nearly everyone behaves rudely. Taking the book as a point of departure, Pendleton embarks on his own souped-up adventures.

The caterpillar dance, in “Alice.”

His “Alice” beguiles with an acrobatic, multimedia fantasy emphasizing transformations and mirror images. An eclectic score — ranging from Bollywood to Latin Pop — accompanies the eight-member cast as they frolic and manipulate props in ways that are wildly imaginative. Immense graphic projections and video landscapes fill the background and create atmosphere; but even when these projections turn kaleidoscopic, they never distract from the live action onstage. The dancing and projections are wonderfully synchronized. The dancers handle themselves, and all their equipment, with consummate grace, so that each episode flows into the next, and the movement often has a lilting quality.

Every viewer can pick his favorites from among the 24 short skits that compose this antic revue. In one episode, exercise balls form the segments of a blue caterpillar who marches in on little red feet. Naturally, these segments come apart, knocking against each other like balance balls in a pendulum, before their human handlers begin to dribble and surf them. In another episode, the women of the company are divided at the waist, wearing black funnel skirts mirrored by red funnel tops that extend over the dancers’ heads. The red tops seem infinitely malleable, and the women shape them into hoods and turbans, and shells from which their faces peer like shy sea-creatures.

Multiple Alices scamper among a forest of mirrors. When the mirror-handlers emerge from behind, they partner their own reflections, seeming to support themselves in the air by balancing on their own hands. Miraculously, their heads and bodies then vanish, leaving only their bare legs arranged in a circle, like crooked rays emerging from a sun.

Pendleton has a way with props, yet lest anyone think he can’t do without them, the choreographer also stages an episode of pure physicality. Initially the dancers resemble trees in a forest. Soon, however, they begin coupling in ingenious ways, the women riding the men or wrapped around them in the type of acrobatic rodeo that made Pilobolus famous.

A dancing rabbit, in “Alice.”

Though each episode has its own devices and raison d’être, the “Alice” theme holds them together loosely. At the outset, Carroll’s heroine welcomes us, appearing seated in mid-air with a copy of the book that bears her name. She sits high on a ladder, which the author manipulates from shadows far below. Alice will reappear intermittently, growing and shrinking, diving into and popping out of rabbit holes. Often her figure multiplies, and once she is replaced by a mannequin whose head spins around, as if demon-possessed.

White rabbits also multiply, huddled together and twitching, and careful to reclaim stray members of the herd. Playing-card queens jockey for position, mounted on their pawns in a wheeled chess game. The head of a giant cat appears, but its Cheshire grin is missing. Instead, this cat’s eyes spiral hypnotically. No one cries “Off with his head!,” but in a disturbing episode, Alice becomes a giant spider. Near the end, a trio of Alices play like fairies in a rose garden, juggling giant blossoms on their upturned feet.

Despite this production’s commitment to technology, Pendleton’s love of nature shines through.

Alas, tea parties and lazy afternoons spent boating on the river are less common than they were. Yet children — and some choreographers — have not lost the power to dream.

For more on MOMIX, visit momix.com.