Interview: An epic wonderland of multimedia magic and dance for families

Joss Arnott invites us to Meet the Hatter 

We’re all familiar with the character of the Mad Hatter from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, but it’s unlikely you will have seen him as a dynamic dancer. Well, now’s your chance! This autumn sees the return of Meet the Hatter, Joss Arnott Dance’s spectacular cinematic dance and multimedia production, which vividly reimagines the character’s story for a family audience. We were intrigued to find out more about the show, so who better to ask than Joss Arnott himself? 

Hi Joss. Thanks very much for stopping by to tell us about Meet the Hatter. What can you share with us about the premise of the show and its themes? 

Hi there – thanks for inviting me to chat, it’s so lovely to be able to share information on the show in this way! Meet the Hatter is our epic dance and multimedia production performed by a solo dancer that has, at its heart, themes of joy, fantasy, friendship, overcoming loneliness and an empowering message of being able to achieve anything if you put your mind to it.

We created and toured the show to celebrate our 15th anniversary as a company and it’s our most ambitious and boldest production to date. I wanted to explore the idea of what would happen if no one arrived at the Hatter’s tea party, so we developed a reimagined story exploring the Hatter’s longing for connection, his journey to making friends and finding where he fits in the world, whilst embracing his individuality and understanding how being different can be his superpower to explore and unlock things he never knew he was capable of.

We’ve created a new, magical version of the Hatter’s Wonderland, exploring how he develops new skills and confidence whilst highlighting the importance of imagination, play and curiosity.

The Hatter character represents all of us. We can connect with him on many levels and can relate to his journey exploring how he navigates this new Wonderland to find meaning to create real change in his life. 

What inspired you to explore the Mad Hatter’s world, rather than any of the other characters in Alice in Wonderland? 

I’ve always been fascinated with the Hatter, even as a child. I’ve always been drawn to the layers of the character’s personality and with the themes I was interested in exploring for the show, I knew the Hatter was the perfect fit.

I loved the idea of reimaging the Hatter and telling a new story that people could relate to in many ways. With the projections and animations, this meant we could create such a spectacle, which was truly exciting for me. I’ve always described my work in general as cinematic and with this show in particular we have taken this to the next level.

The idea of being able to build a Wonderland that is different from anything I had seen before was so interesting to me creatively. The team’s imaginations were stretched to the max and what we have created is extremely captivating. I hope audiences continue to enjoy it. 

How have you integrated the dance aspects of the show with visual projections and music to give the story life, bringing it off the page? 

I wanted to challenge myself by doing something I had never done before, working with technology in this way to create a show where we reinvent the iconic Hatter, showing different sides of his personality that a range of audiences could relate to.

During our research and development period in 2024 we explored what we wanted the show to look like and include overall, whilst exploring what the Hatter’s movement language could be in relation to the stylistic qualities of my work, so that it stayed very on-brand as a Joss Arnott Dance production.

During the creation process, we confirmed the majority of the narrative for the entire show first, which then influenced everything that followed. Original music was composed through multiple themes, environments and storyboarding; this then influenced the multimedia and lighting within the show. To see it all come together still blows my mind!

The choreography is intrinsically linked to the originally composed score. I explore the interplay between movement and music in all of my work as music is so important to me and it’s the artform I need to be able to create any choreographic content. With the multimedia and music working together throughout the entirety of the show, we were then able to decide how this influences the Hatter’s movement – our main questions throughout were; is he reactive to the various environments? Is he in control? Is he building Wonderland or is it being offered to him?

Tell us about your dancers – how have they responded to working in this amazing multimedia space?

Dom [Coffey] and Robbie [Ordoña] are incredible; they are such charismatic performers in every sense who share some similarities but are also very different dancers, which makes the Hatter role so exciting to watch. Dom and I have worked together since 2020 on multiple shows and Robbie joined us for this production. It was wonderful to collaborate with them both on developing the Hatter’s energy and spirit as they’re very relatable performers and role models who can demonstrate technical excellence with emotional depth that can resonate with audiences regardless of their dance knowledge.

It’s such an impressive skill to be able to perform such a demanding, physically charged solo for over an hour, then with the additions of all of their crucial spacing, timing and performance qualities it’s a lot for them to execute and I applaud them for their stamina, focus and talent always.

It was the first time any of us had worked with projection and animation so it was exciting to meet that challenge as a collective and see how we could create this immersive world not just for the Hatter but for our audience too. It was also important to me with it being a solo show, that the performers never felt alone on stage, so we explored how their interactions with the multimedia created different relationships and intentions throughout that also enhances the immersive nature of the show.

This is an ambitious, spectacular piece of work that could easily be targeted more obviously towards adults, but you’ve opened it up to appeal to a wider family audience. Why was it important to you to also engage with children? 

This is our second production for young people and their families and I wanted to offer an experience of escapism for children, which as we know is what theatre provides, but for us to really present a spectacle and visual feast for them to be inspired about what they were seeing and feeling. We worked with almost 500 children within school and community settings during both our research and creation periods facilitated through our Human Centred Design process to make sure what we were making was relevant to our intended audiences. It’s a passion and priority of both mine and Joss Arnott Dance to make dance accessible and to provide engagement opportunities to inspire children through arts and culture whilst developing their health and wellbeing in general.

We’ve also been blown away by how adults have responded to the show and what they experience. Meet the Hatter has a lot of layers to it so it’s wonderful to know that people can take away different things from watching the show, whether that’s being impressed by the dancing, visuals, music, storytelling, or the Hatter’s emotional journey, there really is something for everyone.

You have an astonishing list of talented creatives on the team. Can you tell us about some of them and what they bring to the production? 

I call our collaborators the dream team as it was such an amazing experience working with everyone. They committed to pouring everything into creating the show. I worked once again with Sue Buckmaster as our wonderful dramaturg, who was instrumental in shaping our story and exploring how we could make the show’s messaging universal.

It was our first time working with Oleta Haffner who created original music for the show and it’s also through Oleta’s brilliance that the storytelling is enhanced throughout. Bec Smith (Urban Projections) was also a first-time collaboration for us and Bec’s expertise captures the magic of the Hatter’s Wonderland and the interplay between the music, multimedia and choreography.

Josh Tomalin, who we have worked with for many years, has produced such a stunning lighting design that is programmed down to every millisecond to capture the magic within the show that is vital to creating different environments and settings. His work is outstanding in every way.

We also collaborated with Miguel Altunaga (Movement Consultant), Alexandros Savvides (Animator) Maisie Drewery-Harris (Costume Designer), Ellie Nicholas (Assistant Costume Designer) and Vicky Ackroyd (Audio Describer) all of whom contributed so much to enhancing the quality of the show.

I’m also very grateful for my JAD team and all the work they do to make sure this show has longevity and to making sure we reach as many audiences as we can through our campaigns, programmes and initiatives.

Meet the Hatter is touring the length and breadth of England until summer next year. How did you choose the locations, and what plans do you have for the show after this tour? 

We wanted to continue touring the show following our first outing in 2025/26 as I truly believe that it’s a wonderful theatrical experience that can be appreciated by different audiences on a national and international level. Our schedule is so exciting as we are touring to both theatres we have built relationships with for years and also theatres that are new to us, yet all want to build their audiences for dance. We have also chosen to tour to multiple locations where there is low provision for arts and culture, so we are able to connect with young people and audiences in these areas. We are about to embark on our first international tour to the USA and Canada, which is extremely exciting as we have been working on this for the past couple of years. We have announced our touring schedule up until June next year, but we will also be touring in Autumn 2027 with these dates to be announced shortly!

Thanks very much to Joss for talking to us about this extraordinary feat of entertainment, which sounds amazing. I take my hat off to him…  

Meet the Hatter is a family show aimed at ages 5+ which embarks on a UK tour from 24 October 2026 to 26 June 2027. 

The production was created using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. It was commissioned by Lincoln Arts Centre. Supported by Abderrahim Crickmay Charitable Settlement, Z-arts, Northern Ballet, University of Salford, Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, Children’s Capital of Culture, The Golsoncott Foundation, Bradford Arts Centre, Barnsley Civic and Unity Theatre Trust.