K Dance Card by Birgitt Shannon is part of the The Incubator's celebration of Alice in Wonderland. Photo/supplied
Alice in Wonderland celebrates her 150th birthday this year and we continue to be enthralled by the spell cast by Lewis Carroll when he wrote the much-loved children's book in 1865.
Was it just an innocent depiction of a child's dream-like adventure, or was there more to it than first
meets the eye? Since its Victorian genesis subsequent generations have been keen to hunt for hidden meanings and messages. Was it really about drugs? Was the author perhaps less benign than he seemed?
With each generation has come a new interpretation of the story.
The 1930s was when people started questioning what was originally conceived as a pleasant, delightful, nonsensical children's story in favour of Freudian interpretation.
In the 1960s, Carroll was dug as one of the beautiful people. He was speaking the language, man. So much so, it was sung about - a lot! Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit included the lyrics, "One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small". The Beatles wrote I am the Walrus and to the present day Wonderland continues to be the source of inspirational for many musicians from Radiohead to Taylor Swift.
