What's On

Belvoir and the State Theatre Company South Australia present the Sydney premiere of Clare Barron’s Pulitzer Prize nominated comedy, Dance Nation. Fresh from Adelaide Festival, it runs from 14^th March to 12^th April. Somewhere in America, away from the bright lights, a group of young teen girls prepare for the most important event of their lives – the finals of a national dance show contest! But all the anxieties and confusions of the adult world come sashaying on stage, revealing a dog-eat-dog drama. With the young girls played by adult women - as if reliving past agonies and triumphs, Dance Nation is part-Dance Moms, part-Hunger Games, and is at once a crushingly funny satire of ambition, adolescence, desire and friendship and a subtly subversive exploration of that time of life when the demons can get in.

Dance Nation features a splendid cast of some of the country’s finest talent including AFI Award-winner, Strictly Ballroom’s Tara Morice, Helpmann Award Winners Mitchell Butel (Belvoir’s Mr Burns, Angels in America), Amber McMahon (Belvoir’s Bliss, Angels in America, and her Helpmann Award winning role in Girl Asleep Belvoir/Windmill) and Rebecca Massey (Belvoir’s Cloudstreet, ABC’s The Letdown), with Elena Carapetis (SBS’s The Hunting, Channel 7’s All Saints), Tim Overton (STCSA’s The 39 Steps, The Eye) and the thrilling, emerging talents Emma Harvie (The Wolves, Harp in the South) and Sydney Theatre Award Best Newcomer Winner, Chika Ikogwe (Fangirls, The Wolves). And making her acting debut is multi-award winning choreographer Yvette Lee (Hayes Theatre Co’s American Psycho and Caroline, Or Change).