_{Cover Image: A scene from The Genesis Project.  Image by Tashi Hall.}

The Genesis Project by Parkin Projects

Victoria Hall, Fremantle

10 Nights in Port, Thursday 27 August 2026

As its name suggests, The Genesis Project takes us on a journey back to the origins of ancient things.

In particular, the work’s choreographer/director Kimberely Parkin and her creative collaborators lead us to times and places where enduring stories of women’s bodies, minds and capacities first took hold.

But rather than reconnecting us with these tales we may have forgotten, this work cleverly deconstructs these stories and the roles of their female leads, to allow to see how their women contain multitudes and are vastly more complex and unbounded than their original narratives acknowledge them to be.

It’s also clear this work has poise and power from its very first moments, as we watch its female figures stir to life and rise from the earth. As they wake, their bodies feel both united in strength and infused with their own forceful energies that have unstoppable charge.

After rising from their archaic swamp, they come together in a draped sculptural pose, in a neat pile of bodies covered in white lace, pink satin and floral attire.

The accompanying soundscore to these early scenes is very simple (the work’s sound design by David Stewart with original compositions by Annika Moses is stunning throughout).

As the dancers slide their way to their first resting formation, we hear female singer’s monotone notes start to hum overhead. Her long-held tones soon cascade together creating a more layered score, while the performers break away from each other, raising the tempo and dynamism of their moves.

Before long, the work’s six dancers – Ella Cartledge, Storm Helmore, Sophie Molony, Jessica Pettitt, Sarah Sim and Luci Young – come together again, but this time they form a daisy-chain seated circle at centre stage.

They stroke each other’s hair and share secrets in a tableau that is strikingly reminiscent of the women-nymph-goddess displays seen in many Pre-Raphaelite paintings (works like John William Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs, 1896, come especially to mind).

But this delicate circle is soon burst apart as the performers’ bodies disperse to the edge of the space, and a slightly more foreboding air soon descends on us all.

As we see a lone dancer (Storm Helmore) elegantly crossing the stage, taking apples from her basket and rolling them across the floor, tThe other dancers re-enter and grasp at the scattering fruit with energies more urgent, fervid and demonic than anything we have seen thus far.

From this point on, the work is possessed with entirely new energies which erupts through waves of ritualistic dancing, combative duals and other primal monstrosities – all of which are accompanied by more cacophonous soundscores and a range of (excellent) dramatic lighting states.

This second half of the work is its most forceful, funny and exciting, but it’s impossible to pick out any one of its creative elements for singular, standout praise. The same is true of its cast of dancers, who, while given opportunities for solo and duet sequences in certain scenes, work seamlessly as an ensemble and appear equally enigmatic throughout.

By its end, The Genesis Project feels like a sharp, magnetic piece of contemporary performance which, thanks to the combined energies of its young creative team, achieves a rich final result.

One can only hope these artists can continue the evolution of the work (with more time and money invested in its set design in particular, it could be taken to another level).

It would also be great if future seasons of the project are afforded more than a one night only showing, because after its only event at the 10 Nights in Port festival sold out, there’s every chance it would have attracted more strong houses if given a couple more nights to run.