Cover image: Georgia Waite and Heath Kolka. Incandescence Ballet at the Quarry. Photo credit Hypnosis Creative Agency and Mauro Palmieri

If Western Australia has been good at growing wheat for the world or shipping out iron ore, the state has also excelled in its ability to nurture some of the world’s best ballet dancers.

It’s an overlooked fact worth savouring as the WA Ballet announces this week its 2026 season, the parting gift of guest artistic director and former Australian Ballet principal dancer David McAllister.

Before unwrapping those goodies, let’s take a moment to consider WA Ballet’s contribution to the creative industry sector, a cultural parallel to any WA resource giant in the mining sector.  

“Western Australia’s always been a great city for dance training, and it’s sad that it’s not recognised as that,” West Australian-born and trained McAllister tells me. “It has produced some extraordinary dancers through generations, way back to 1952. We have been a big ballet state going back to Madame Kira Bousloff, who came to Perth and started a school.

He adds: “There was a period of time at the Australian Ballet where half the principal artists were from here, Stephen Heathcote, myself and Miranda Coney – three of the six principal dancers were West Australian.”

Also worth savouring is the fact that WA Ballet emerged in the most isolated capital on the globe to become one of only three major ballet companies in our nation alongside the Australian Ballet and Queensland Ballet. 

“I think there is gloriousness in isolation – it allows you to be creative,” says McAllister, who recently passed the AD baton on to fellow West Australian Leanne Stojmenov, also a former Australian Ballet principal dancer.

“So often ballet companies in Europe all try to compete,” he says. “This company has really been courageous about sticking to their charter, having a point of difference – even now their strategic plan is about really reflecting Western Australia.”

Nowhere was McAllister’s own ambition for difference on better display than Butterfly Effect, the company’s recent full-length ballet brilliantly conceived by choreographer/dancer Alice Topp. This world premiere was inspired by the operatic theme of Madame Butterfly, yet was set in the cloudless landscape of contemporary Western Australia. The ballet’s unusual heroine is a female army medic named Charlie, who is torn between her roles as lover, mother and rescuer in a traumatic war.

As Seesaw reviewer Patrick Gunasekera perceptively noted: “Butterfly Effect is not only a powerful narrative work of its own, but also a transformative testament to how a culture like ballet can move beyond the sexism it has notoriously enshrined for centuries.”

It’s fitting that WA Ballet now has appointed its fourth female artistic director since Madame Bousloff founded the company in 1952. As Seesaw’s dance expert Rita Clarke wrote in her recent in-depth profile on incoming artistic director Leanne Stojmenov,

“Leanne’s sights will be on planning the season for 2027 and for the celebration of the Ballet’s 75^th anniversary.”

Meanwhile, WA Ballet’s 2026 season ‘Of Here, From Then’ – created by the outgoing McAllister – has been unveiled this week. It features five productions, and five world premiere dance works, one of which will be kept under wraps for a while longer. 

The 2026 season will begin with Incandescence: Ballet at the Quarry (6 – 28 February) featuring four world premieres from internationally acclaimed choreographers Tim Harbour and Ihsan Rustem. WA Ballet’s own dancers Chihiro Nomura and Polly Hilton will make their mainstage choreographic debuts.

WA Ballet’s Gothic-styled Dracula (17 – 22 April) will rise again in Perth, a hugely entertaining take on Bram Stoker’s vampire classic that won several awards. Commissioned by the company in 2018, it will reach new audiences when WA Ballet takes the show to Adelaide, marking the first time in a decade that it has taken a major production interstate.

Genesis 25 (June – 4 July) is the company’s creative incubator for dancers to branch out and choreograph works on their peers. Genesis is an opportunity in 2026 to see a suite of new works, and a group of choreographers of the future. 

The ‘watch this space’ world premiere (4 – 19 September) is an exciting international collaboration, but details will not be released until October 8.

The 2026 season will end with WA Ballet’s offbeat version of The Nutcracker (20 November – 13 December), billed as “the magical story of Clara and the Nutcracker as they defeat the rascally Rat King.”

McAllister formally departs the company at the end of the year “although I plan to be a high-frequency visitor!” He takes with him an optimistic belief that ballet fans are growing in his home state.

“The Christmas season is always amazing – we do 22 performances and sell really well. Just recently when we did Alice (in Wonderland) at the Crown Theatre, we found 70 percent of our audience were first time ballet-goers to our season. So there is a growing ballet audience out there and that’s the thing this company is building on.”