By Tyler Wright
On Thursday 25 August, after a two-year hiatus, 90 children from Mount Dandenong Primary School will make up will take the stage once again to display their talents in the performing arts.
The students, from grade one through to grade six, will take on five other schools in heats at Frankston Arts Centre, each vying for a spot in the final ‘Showcase’ for the Wakakirri Story-Dance Festival.
“We don’t do auditioning or anything like that; if you would like to be in it, you’re in it,” Mount Dandenong Primary School Wakakirri teacher Jody Howell said.
“A lot of other schools that do Wakakirri, it’s usually only for their senior students, so that’s our point of difference,” Jody said.
This year, Mount Dandenong Primary School will be performing ‘Everybody’s Free;’ where isolated children who are trapped in their homes venture to the zoo and set the unhappy animals free.
“This year will be especially exciting for our younger students; a lot of them haven’t even been on a school excursion on a bus before,” Jody said.
“Our older ones [have] also missed out on quite a lot over the last two years…
We had planned to do this performance last year, and we were getting ready for that to happen, and then Covid and lockdowns took over and we had to postpone.”
Every year, 20,000 school-aged students from 300 schools across Australia compete in Wakakirri; a national program helping promote student engagement and wellbeing through storytelling.
A performance between three and seven minutes long is performed by a group of students, telling a story using a combination of dancing, creative movement and acting, to pre-recorded music.
Mount Dandenong Primary School has been able to make it into the ‘Showcase’ two times since 2010; most recently in 2017 with their performance on ‘Saving the Bees’.
“It’s a real thrill, especially given other schools with their choreography might be a bit more tight, but us, given our young age, we we really like pride ourselves on the way we can tell a story through our dancing and not not relying on things like our sets,” Jody said.
“We also try and keep things to a minimum, all our students would rather be on stage under the lights rather than backstage moving sets around; so that’s worked out really well.”
Grade six student Claire McPeake has participated in the Wakakirri Story-Dance Festival three times, following in the footsteps of her four older sisters.
“I just like being there with lots and people and being able to go there, dance and have fun,” Claire said.
“It’s been very exciting because we’ve been learning more of the dance.”
Jody said Mount Dandenong Primary School reaches out to the community for ideas for their Wakakirri performance every two years.
“I think the older kids can read a bit deeper into it, whereas for the younger kids, it’s all about having fun and and getting to act as an animal and the joy of performing more so for them,” she said.
The Basin Primary School is also participating in the Wakikirri Story-Dance Festival in 2022.
For more information on Wakakirri, visit https://wakakirri.com/.
