Young dancers put their best feet forward

Members of the youth dance sector will be networking, training and performing at the Australian Youth Dance Festival in Melbourne over the coming week.

Canberra-based youth dance company QL2. Photo credit: Lorna Sim.

The youth dance sector may lack the profile of Australia’s youth circus and theatre sectors but it certainly doesn’t lack ambition, according to Alice Lee Holland, Artistic Director of the Australian Youth Dance Festival (AYDF).

‘I think it’s still finding its feet,’ she said of the sector. Despite the hard work of many dedicated youth dance companies and individuals who are doing ‘an incredible job’, Holland emphasised, the sector as a whole is ‘not very good at telling our own story. It’s a bit of a silent artform traditionally.’

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Richard Watts is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM, and serves as the Chair of La Mama Theatre's volunteer Committee of Management. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, and was awarded the status of Melbourne Fringe Living Legend in 2017. In 2020 he was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize. Most recently, Richard was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Green Room Awards Association in June 2021. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts