Cover Image: Madeline Lee in Return to Terra, part of WAAPA’s 2025 Verge program. Photo by Stephen Heath.

Verge, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts – Dance
Geoff Gibbs Theatre, Saturday 15 November, 7.30pm

Traditionally WAAPA’s annual end-of-year dance showcase is titled Verge, a nod to its graduating students as they stand on the precipice of their careers. 

This year that title has another layer. The school itself is on the verge of a new chapter; this is the final season the dance department will give in the theatre that has been its home stage since 1980. It’s fitting, then, that this year’s Verge triple bill includes a few nods to past staff in its contemporary works.

But first, ballet. If you’re a fan of the Romantic “white acts”, then this one’s for you. In Moonlight Suite WAAPA lecturers Kim McCarthy and Tracy Blackwell have stitched together a selection of ghostly scenes from Giselle, La Sylphide and Les Sylphide.

From the corps de ballet to soloists, Saturday night’s second and third year cast members gave polished performances that captured the ethereal and occasionally unsettling fairytale charm of these scenes. In place of an orchestra, Gennaro Di Donna has arranged the various scores for a trio of piano (Di Donna), violin/viola (Noah Furtado) and cello (Finlay Labuschagne), beautifully performed and well suited to the auditorium.

A highlight was Tahlia Stoker and Jack Van Der Geest Hester’s pas de deux from Giselle. Expressive and elegant, Stoker was captivating as Giselle. Expertly partnered by Van Der Geest Hester, she managed the challenging promenades in arabesque and penchés of the pas de deux with apparent ease. 

The bill turns to contemporary dance next, with a work that references a more earthly white realm. Choreographed by independent artists Ella-Rose Trew and Emma Fishwick for second years, Return to Terra responds to the ways in which climate change is impacting Antarctica’s landscape. A reimagining of Terra 3, the last work that Nanette Hassall created at WAAPA during her 25 year tenure as Head of Dance, it’s the first of those aforementioned homages to former WAAPA staff.

From the outset there’s a breathless energy in the howling wind of Eduardo Cossio’s visceral soundscape, in the stiff breezes that animate a parachute or ripple a single bright flag, in a whirling, eddying solo (Madeline Lee). 

In quilted vests and trackpants (by Clay Chase), that reference the sturdiness of outdoor apparel, 17 dancers oscillate between embodying and navigating harsh terrain.

There are many compelling images in this invigorating work, danced with verve and tenacity by its cast. A quartet performs a phrase of rolling heads, shaking fists, imploring hands, against a cold, glassy soundscape. A blizzard of white confetti falls from paper-like clouds; driving electronic beats buffet the dancers as confetti pieces swirl among their falling, flipping bodies. 

Closing the evening is Field of Analogies, created by WAAPA’s Sue Peacock with colleague Kynan Hughes in collaboration with the graduating dancers who perform the work. Appropriately for the final WAAPA dance work to be performed in this theatre, this one is most strongly tied to the school’s past, “inspired by the history of … so many people making fleeting and/or lifelong connections through their experience in this building,” says Peacock. Perhaps the layers of distant voices in Louis Frere-Harvey’s score represent those many creative family lines.

There’s a playfulness to this work. Blair Catterall’s twinkling chains of fairy lights hang vine-like over the stage. Amidst a sea of Mei Ling Lim’s stylish black outfits, a red dress appears like a conjuring trick. A joyful skipping phrase becomes a motif. Peacock attributes the last to the memory of late WAAPA academic Maggi Phillips, but there’s something of Phillips’s sense of humour threaded throughout. 

Peacock also pays tribute to Nanette Hassall with “complex choreographic structures”;  phrases that sweep and flip, ribbon-like, across the stage, and multiple concurrent duets where matched pairs appear like Easter eggs. It’s all beautifully danced by the cast of 17, and when those final lights go out it feels too soon.

As WAAPA prepares for its big move, this year’s edition of Verge is well worth seeing, an evening of powerful dance, with a sprinkling of nostalgia.

Verge continues until 19 November 2025.