From street to stage

FORM Dance Projects and Riverside Theatres have unveiled plans for a two-day street dance festival featuring a double bill of Western Sydney’s best female-led dance groups.

Called INTERSECTIONS: Street Dance X Theatre, the festival will take place from November 29 to 30.

INTERSECTIONS' cutting-edge line-up includes Kinetic Illusions by Sydney's inner-west all female powerhouse Oh Sheila, an all-female crew trained in styles ranging from ballet, jazz and contemporary to hip-hop, house and popping. Collectively, they have experiences and achievements in musical and physical theatre, dance exhibitions and battles.

Oh Sheila’s Kinetic Illusions will transform Riverside’s Lennox Theatre into a complex and multifaceted world, challenging the audience’s understanding of perceived reality. A collaboration between choreographers Ashley Goh, Beverley Li and Tiffany Nung, the work is inspired by their Asian heritage and love of street dance.

Sharing the bill will be INTERFLOW by Destructive Steps Dance Association (DSDA) "a non-profit organisation made up of Sydney street dancers which is dedicated to promoting the positive ideals of hip hop", according to its website.

Expanding its work to the performance space, DSDA's INTERFLOW follows the journey of four street dancers of diverse Asian backgrounds as they explore and contemplate the flows within their freestyle-based dance. In play with storytelling, theatrical lighting and a range of music genres, they deconstruct and reconstruct their hip hop, popping and locking bases alongside the establishing and evolving style of waving as they seek to find their place between past, present and future.

These two works will be billed alongside a special, one-off screening of Keep Stepping, a coming-of-age documentary on love, obsession and the transformative power of performance. This award-winning documentary is by Sydney-based filmmaker Luke Cornish and follows the parallel stories of Gabi and Patricia – two remarkably different female dancers – as they train for the biggest street dance competition in Australia: Destructive Steps.