Have you ever seen anything more elegant than pairs of dancers leaping across the stage? Or a group performance across all year levels? Well, this year, we saw all of this – and more – at QACI’s Launch Dance Showcase, a true night to remember for all who came.
With assistance from the award-winning Choreographer and Creative Director, Brendan Hodder, QACI Year 10, 11, and 12 students were on fire as they danced across their stage. Made up of contemporary and commercial dance works (formed by QACI dance students in collaboration with Liz Collyer and Brendan Hodder), this showcase consisted of three stunning Acts, each exploring various styles within movement and dance to bring their eccentric ideas to life.
Act 1, titled Mesh, was performed by the Year 12 Dance Collective, and consisted of 10 uniquely dazzling performances. It began with Web a piece choreographed by Kaiulani Sullivan exploring the different sides of Spiderman, and progressed through performances on new societal systems surrounding the idea of one’s identity (Blindfolded), an outstanding tribute to Angelina Jolie (choreographed by Georgie Parlby), and to the crowd’s amazement, a jaw-dropping cohort performance by Corey Gibb, reenacting the viral video game from 2020, ‘Among Us’. The cohesion and humour in this piece made it an easy crowd favourite and had everyone on the edge of their seats, waiting to see how it played out.
From the Year 11 Dance Collective came an Act titled Brain Fade, featuring 12 individually choreographed dances investigating human conditions and the brain, to build upon their own abstract concepts. This Act produced stunning pieces by Ruby Mason, with her performance on the five senses, Pain Relief, choreographed by Aiden Huntly, exploring the realities of pain relief drugs, and finished on Paralysis (Jenny Randel), diving into the idea of losing something that everyone else has. Matilda Maclennan’s choreography in Prefrontal-Frontal Cortex provided a spectacular dance focusing on what happens when the Prefrontal Cortex is damaged, and how it affects thoughts, actions and emotions. The crowd went wild during this performance – not to mention its incredible ending!
Our night had begun to end by this point, but not without one final BANG from the Year 10, 11, and 12 students collectively! Behind Glass dove into modern societies rising fixation with their glowing screens and social media, taking the opportunity to expose its devastating impact on the real world. Our amazing new Year 10 students rocked the stage, starting off the performance exceptionally strong before blending in with the Year 11 dancers.
Overall, QACI’s 2024 Dance Showcase was absolutely beautiful, and I highly recommended it to every student, teacher, and visitor in our extremely talented school, showcased (ha see what I did there?) beautifully, once again through our surrounding students.
Article written by Maggie Williams, Year 10