Perth Festival dance highlights

The Perth Festival has commissioned a major new work from local choreographer Rachel Arianna Ogle as one of the headline acts for its 2022 program.

Called And the Earth will Swallow them Whole, the work promises to be a “poetic and compelling new dance work of seismic proportions”, created by a team of leading Australian performance artists. Ogle is a highly regarded independent choreographer, performer and educator who has worked with numerous performing arts companies in Australia and overseas.

Another dance highlight is Ninth Wave, performed by Gold Coast-based company The Farm in association with Perth contemporary company Co3. Ninth Wave premiered at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games cultural festival Bleach in 2018 and will be transferred to the sand of Perth's iconic City Beach for the Perth outing. Described as "beginning with a party of idiots wilfully ignoring the warning signs of the end of the world", the work has an original score composed by Ben Ely of Regurgitator. See our clip below:

Also on the program is Joel Bray with his solo, Daddy. Bray is, among other things, the choreographer-in-residence at Melbourne's Chunky Move and this solo is an intimate exploration of gay and Indigenous identities.

Under the visual arts banner but also using dance is Amrita Hepi with her video/dance installation, Monumental, a work which offers a "charged meditation on the tradition of building monuments, questioning who and what gets memorialised". 

And as always at the Perth Festival, the West Australian Ballet will present its outdoor Quarry season, this time titled "Platinum" in honour of the company's 70th anniversary. 

The Perth Festival runs from Feb 11 to March 6. More info here.