Life on Mars: Youth Dance Festival 2025 brings Canberra’s creativeness to the stage

Ausdance ACT’s much-loved Youth Dance Festival returns this month, remodeling the Canberra Theatre right into a galaxy of creativity as greater than 700 college students from 25 faculties take to the stage for Life on Mars.

Creative Director and Executive Director of Ausdance ACT, Dr Cathy Adamek, says this 12 months’s theme has ignited each creativeness and introspection. “The idea of alienation seems to have really sparked them,” she displays. “Some of the interpretations coming through are quite dark – a lot have run with sci-fi and horror film-inspired iconography. There are quite a few zombies.”

For Adamek, this fascination is sensible. “I think this cohort were particularly affected by the COVID stay-at-home and stay-away-from-friends but online-is-okay messaging that hit them at a formative time,” she explains. “It’s great that they can draw on pop culture and interpret this brave new world we live in.”

Running 28 and 29 October at Canberra Theatre, the pageant’s non-competitive format continues to set it aside. Founded in 1984, Youth Dance Festival (affectionately often known as “Dance Fest”) has lengthy been a inventive hub the place faculty communities come collectively to choreograph, design, and carry out authentic works on knowledgeable stage.

Adamek says this openness is what retains the pageant so very important. “You don’t necessarily have to be doing dance as a subject to enter YDF,” she says. “That inclusivity has allowed new genres to emerge from different cultural groups who didn’t have a performance or training platform through the conventional studio system. It’s how a lot of Canberra’s super-successful hip-hoppers and street dancers first got their break.”

Over the many years, the pageant has grown into a strong bridge between arts and training, supported by a singular collaboration between Ausdance ACT, Canberra Theatre Centre, and ACT faculties. “It provides less well-funded schools with an opportunity to connect and present in a major theatre,” Adamek notes. “We have Black Mountain School, an ACT specialist school catering for students with additional needs, perform every year since 2005. Marist College is boys-only and have re-emerged since COVID. We’ve even had kids in burkas dancing to Beyoncé.”

The freedom to discover numerous influences, from ballet to TikTok choreography, is a part of the pageant’s enduring attraction. Students are chargeable for each side of manufacturing – choreography, lighting, costume, and set – giving them real-world inventive company. “What you get is a very authentic and moving interpretation of young people’s experiences and influences at a particular time,” says Adamek. “I’ve watched very disconnected and unmotivated kids suddenly pull together to work as a team because of that deadline. No one wants to go onstage and not know what they’re doing. You have to learn to work together and get over yourself because the audience are coming at 7pm!”

That sense of objective and neighborhood has formed 1000’s of Canberra college students, lots of whom have gone on to careers in dance and theatre. For others, it’s an opportunity to specific themselves and discover connection in an more and more advanced world. “There’s nothing like putting on a show to make friends for life,” says Adamek.

Youth Dance Festival: Life on Mars runs 28–29 October on the Canberra Theatre.

Tickets by way of Canberra Theatre Centre.