CreepyPasta review | Dancehouse

Once confined to internet message boards and YouTube narration channels, creepypasta has steadily entered the mainstream, most recently through the release of Backrooms. These eerie tales of liminal spaces, conspiracies and inexplicable horrors have become a defining form of modern folklore. Harrison Hall's CreepyPasta draws on that tradition, using dance, sound and media to examine the anxieties lurking beneath our constantly connected lives.

CreepyPasta opens with a striking sequence. A lone performer (Nikki Tarling) is tethered to a rope that disappears into the darkness above. She moves with slow, precise fluidity under a solitary spotlight. Shiv Geaney's lighting sends red laser beams slicing through the space towards the audience, while Mat Spisbah's pulsing, heartbeat-like soundscape builds a sense of foreboding. Tarling's body is the only human presence in an environment consumed by screens, attempting to resist invisible forces pulling at her. Harrison Hall soon joins her, with the pair navigating various physical and multimedia encounters that push the boundaries between dance, performance art and digital installation.

Saplings review | Arts Centre Melbourne

Young people rarely enter the youth justice system because of a single bad decision. More often, they're shaped by circumstances beyond their control, the adults who fail them, and institutions that struggle to offer the support they need. Hannah Belanszky's Saplings - which is drawn from workshops and interviews with incarcerated youths - places those realities centre stage, inviting audiences to reconsider the labels and see the people underneath.

The vignettes introduce us to different young people in different situations, yet they are all intrinsically connected. A teenager is questioned by police after breaching his bail to buy instant noodles, while another group of friends who have just broken into a house cling to doli incapax, the legal principle that children under a certain age are presumed incapable of understanding right and wrong.

Funeral Flowers review | Red Stitch

Seventeen year-old Angelique dreams of becoming a florist, sparked by the creativity and tenderness of crafting stems and petals into something extraordinary. Yet while she learns to cultivate beauty, she must navigate a world shaped by poverty, racism and the care system. Inspired by the life of Tottenham community leader Gina Moffatt, Emma Dennis-Edwards' Funeral Flowers transforms a deeply personal story into a rich portrait of the people and relationships in Angelique's life, filled with vivid storytelling and sharply observed characterisation.

Told from Angelique's perspective, the script depicts an entire community from a single voice, introducing family members, carers, teachers and friends with assured clarity. It balances humour and heartbreak, making room for warmth and optimism to flourish without diminishing the harsh realities of Angelique's circumstances.

Celebrating 30 Years of Finucane & Smith at Luna Park

Hip hip hooray! Finucane & Smith are turning 30, and naturally, they’re celebrating in the only way they know how: with a gloriously unrestrained carnival of cabaret, burlesque, music, dance, comedy, glamour, chaos and more than a little bit of diva.

Over the past 30 years, Finucane & Smith have created 36 full-length shows, performed across 19 countries, toured 160 Australian towns, entertained more than a million audience members and collected 21 awards along the way. Not bad for a company that has done it all without a penny of ongoing funding.

To mark three decades of making wildly inventive, genre-defying art, the company is returning to Melbourne's iconic Luna Park for Dance Palace, a month-long party running every weekend from mid-August. Dance Palace will bring together a dazzling cast of performers for an event that promises, in true Finucane & Smith fashion, to be anything but predictable. Expect pub rock queens, Bollywood love gods, torch singers, burlesque artists, First Nations performers, gothic legends, live painting, flying pants and plenty of surprises along the way.

Ahead of the glorious mayhem to come, we spoke to a dozen of the 30 performers taking part in Dance Palace about the show, the company, and what makes Finucane & Smith such a singular force in Australian performance.

VISTA review | Malthouse Theatre

What if you could watch the same story twice, but see something completely different the second time? This is the intriguing premise of Stephanie Lake's new dance work VISTA, which presents two acts as two contrasting versions of the same reality. The first is a precise, monochromatic world of dynamic physicality, music and light. After the interval, this previously seen world returns in a bold burst of colour, with familiar movements and ideas transformed by a fresh perspective. Through this clever structural conceit, VISTA challenges the audience to reconsider what they think they know. As choreography, relationships and images return in altered forms, the work demonstrates how dramatically context can change our understanding of an experience.