Gallim Brings WONDERLAND to the Joyce

GALLIM will return to The Joyce Theater from November 13-17 with the New York premiere of WONDERLAND, a bold and thought-provoking work that explores the thin boundaries between human freedom, pack mentality and social control. Initially presented as a half-evening during the company’s Joyce debut in 2010, WONDERLAND has evolved into a full evening-length production, showcasing Miller’s unique blend of intense physicality, emotional depth, and cultural insight.

Set as a playground of ironies, WONDERLAND examines the primal instincts that govern individual expression and group dynamics. The work delves into the tensions between nonconformity and self-preservation, humor and fear, present joys and future insecurities, through the fierce and virtuosic movement of GALLIM’s dancers. They are joined by guest artists Billy Barry, a former member of Batsheva Dance Company, and Arika Yamada, dancer with Gothenburg Ballet. Both Barry and Yamada originated their roles in the 2010 premiere.  The sound design by Jakub Kiupinski and Cristina Spinei of Blind Ear Music enhances the work’s unsettling atmosphere, giving a charming yet eerie edge to Miller’s choreography.

Conceived by Miller as an anti-totalitarian dystopia, the early idea of WONDERLAND was sparked by her sighting of Cai Guo-Qiang's Head On, an installation that features 99 wolves charging at a glass wall. With the expansion of ideological extremisms, social tribalism and conflicts in every region of the World, WONDERLAND has gained renewed relevance today. The work hints at often-invisible forces that drive us apart and make us prey to oppressive methods of control. WONDERLAND’s subtle juxtapositions of individual appetites, survival instincts and collective anxieties shed light onto the insidious mechanisms of herd behavior, social alienation and political subjugation by ways of terror, oblivion, and repression of individual freedoms.

“We are witnessing an extreme departure from one another’s physical and emotional individuality, from the foundations of human dignity, and from the very elements that make us free,” explains Miller. “On social media, millions join virtual armies, charging against each other like packs of vicious wolves—same species, unseen enemies—driven by forces of real terror that we fail to fully comprehend. WONDERLAND navigates these dark pathways of daily alienation, inducement, and mutual aggression,” she continues. “Can we imagine—or perhaps remember—the destructive outcomes on the other side of totalitarian promises and societies? Maybe art, maybe dance, through their creative freedom, can remind us of the way back to empathy and shared humanity.”

In light of current global conflicts and deepening social rifts, WONDERLAND offers a space for audiences to reflect on the invisible forces that drive us apart and consider how we can come together to forge new, more compassionate paths forward.