12 June 2019 04:39

Over 500 dancers competed in this year's WA Festival of Dance in a bid to impress a prestigious line up of adjudicators.

David McAllister AM, Artistic Director of The Australian Ballet and the Academy's Vice President was back in his home town of Perth to adjudicate in a competition which includes an award in his name. Sadly, he was unable to stay the full five days of the event to adjudicate for his own David McAllister Cup which is awarded during the Gala at the end of the Festival. Instead, he entrusted that duty to Aurélien Scannella, Artistic Director of West Australian Ballet and adjudicator for the Festival Gala on Monday 3 June. With WA Ballet currently seeking new company members through open auditions, the timing was perfect for our festival participants to perform in front of Aurélien Scannella.

As always, the standard of performances for this event was extremely high and we would like to commend all those students who took part and their teachers who helped them prepare so diligently.

A warm thank you to our wonderful panel of adjudicators including David McAllister, Aurélien Scannella, Meg Parry, Kim McCarthy, Claire Hill and Oliver Edwardson who was also kind enough to perform as a guest at the gala in WA Ballet's 'Ballet 101'.

Our thanks also to our guest choreographers Brooke Leeder and Scott Elstermann and guest teacher Victoria Maughan.

And more sincere thanks to our generous sponsors for helping us to facilitate opportunities like these for dance students.

Congratulations to all the 2019 WA Festival of Dance winners. You can download a full list of those here.