Cover Image: Students of WAAPA animate the campus corridors during Echolocation, transforming familiar spaces into vibrant pockets of performance. Photo: Stephen Heath

Echolocation, 19 November 2025
Director Michael Barlow, Sam Fox and Michael Whaites
Featuring 2^nd and 3^rd year students of WAAPA

Edith Cowan University’s West Australian Academy of Performing Arts is in the throes of moving to its brand new and impressive Perth City campus.

At the moment though, WAAPA is concentrating on remembering the thousands of brilliant alumni that has passed through its portals since its inception over 40 years ago. They have created the aptly named Echolocation as a homage to its history and its home; its format a site-specific walking performance that celebrates its years of creativity and community.  

There are 72 performers in all and 29 locations. Audiences are invited to follow one of three paths entitled (1) Shadows of tomorrow, Director Sam Fox, (2) Palimpsest of Echos, Director Mark Barlow (Associate Professor of Spare Parts Puppet Theatre) and (3) Goodbye in Seven Stages (Concept, Direction and Arrangement Michael Whaites) Artistic Director Link Dance Company. They are taken through a labyrinth of gardens, studios, corridors and secret nooks into the fantasy world of music, dance, puppetry, spoken word performance that fill the lives of BPA 2^nd and 3^rd year students and graduates from Link Dance (fourth year Honours students.)

Since the spectators are escorted by various coloured flag waving guides it feels rather like being shown around ancient cities abroad; Rome comes to mind –  maybe because of the  rigorous training and discipline need by Gladiators as well as WAAPA students to make it through. And no doubt they were warned, as Ophelia counsels Laertes in Hamlet, not to take the “primrose path of dalliance” (ever-tempting to almost every student) during their hard-won, exhausting and exhilarating tenure at WAAPA.  Their unquestionable dedication was superbly evident in Echolocation.

Although one could see tantalising performances underway as we passed by pathways 1 and 2, the trail which I and my fellow audience followed was LINK pathway 3. Sites for the seven stages of goodbye roamed through the grounds and back into the performing venues inside. The first was set by the Lotus Pond. Here Nan Roman Winmar and the cast sang Yeyi Kedala (originally Now is the Hour and Po Atarau.) The harmony and depth of voice gave this oh so familiar song in its indigenous tongue profound and moving resonance.  

After came Gathering  devised by the LINK Dancers and interweaving 2^nd and 3^rd year BPA and 4^th Year Honours students, with music: Grass, Tree and Stone by Susumu Yakota.  The students, many dressed in wide black trouser/skirts filled the stage with a circular intermingling and gestures akin to the early explorers who courageously rowed in home-made canoes to find verdant and distant shores. It was a reminder of those who were here, on WAAPAs now land, creating dance and song eons before ECU came into existence.

Gradually making our way through the grounds into the foyer we are treated to a push-pull dance against picture windows and varying light and shadows, portraying the hopes and dreams and fears of incoming students and their rise and descent down ramps and stairs towards their destiny.

Once back inside the edifice in the foyer the 1^st Year Bachelor Dance students in black shorts and long black socks wearing funny masks (depicting members of staff?) perform a rather robotic marching and changing places routine said to represent the hundreds of staff both present and past. On high, dancers in black shorts and tops practise on the GGT Juliet balcony, and we glimpse, in the Dressing Room corridor first a tiny bit of the iconic Giselle and then the Powertool Ballet where tutu wearing dancers make threatening gestures with power tools.

And then we come to the highlights of this pathway journey.; No. 6 Years of Tears (Studio 1) Concept Direction and Arrangement by Michael Whaites with choreography by  Lauren Murray, Natalie Allen and LINK Dancers, Leilani Connolly, Georgia Douvartzidis, Hunter Ewen,  Rebecca Fleming, and  Ebony Pluess, and No.7 This is Us (Studio A), Physical score created by Jo Pollitt and Whaites.

Through a mixture of fascinating text, new, classical, and live music, interviews with past students/teachers such as Jo Pollit, Floeur Alder and Amy Wiseman, and haunting, beautiful archival videos flowing across the walls ,the superb LINK dancers in exquisite choreography conveyed the blood swear and tears and exhilarating joy that has passed through the hallowed halls of WAAPA. The culmination gathered the whole cast and musical band onto the stage. Their exuberance, talent and vigour made you want to cry, rather like at a wedding, when you thrill for them at the same time as you fear for them but you know the experience of a WAAPA training will add manna to their determination to succeed.

The journey around the campus and the research that has gone into trying to capture the resplendent history of it all seemed to filter through your bones as you stepped where illustrious artists have stepped before you. So glad there will be many encores for WAAPA albeit in a new venue  – how can there not be with such a magnificent pathway to follow.