Orlando Ballet wunderkind Arcadian Broad closes out his tenure at the company with 'Wonderland'

Arcadian Broad, the 22-year-old Orlando Ballet wunderkind, not only choreographed the 70-minute, three-act Wonderland, which finds Lewis Carroll’s perverse Mad Hatter exiled to the London of the 1920s; he also composed some of the music and dances the starring top-hatted role. Local writer-composer Christopher Belt calls Broad’s score “equal parts Sergei Prokofiev and Danny Elfman, with buoyant, off-kilter motifs”; the frenetic choreography features angular twists and hops evoking the dances of the Jazz Age, and Broad’s signature explosive leaps with eccentrically precise, stop-on-a-dime landings. And as if this event needed any extra buzz, there’s a whiff of is-it-a-scandal-or-not? surrounding the recent abrupt announcement that Broad’s contract would not be renewed. In December 2017, Broad was named the first recipient of the company’s newly established Artist in Residence program; just over a year later, and just over a month before this performance, he’s out altogether. Curiouser and curiouser!

7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, April 26-28 | Walt Disney Theater, Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, 445 S. Magnolia Ave. | 844-513-2014  | drphillipscenter.org | $19-$490

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