FESTIVAL Director Adelina Larsson has again put together a diverse, enjoyable program of locally-bred talent.

“Short + Sweet Dance” opened with one of two offerings from Caitlin MacKenzie and Gab Comerford in a piece about moving forward and carrying the past. An acrobatic, relentless piece performed this intimately with the audience is unforgiving and a couple of the dancers (four performers in total) seemed to be lacking endurance by the end. The words spoken before blackout, “Something has happened here”, leaves the personas of the dancers and interpretation up to the audience.

MacKenzie and Comerford couple each other well as shown again in “Uncommon Ground”, which was well performed, but the song choice (“My Russia” by Woven Hand) overpowered the choreography for most part.

“216” was a clever and entertaining piece improvised by Quindell Orton, with chance determining which music, costume and choreography was used, hence 216 possible combinations.

Her gangly, long-limbed physique, smile and randomly quirky dance made this one of the highlights. Another was “Sci-Fi-ver” where Jake Kuzmar dances robotic isolations to sound bytes from “Star Wars” and “Futurama”. It was well done and a breath of fresh air for the program, as not a lot of this style is regularly seen in this forum.

Jamie Winbank performed a dynamic, assured solo about the concept of a peaceful existence, and returning “contact-improv” dancers Holly Diggle and Keira Mason-Hill displayed their skill and close collaboration. The Mogwai song added a serenity and an almost slo-mo feeling to the piece, but the performance was not as strong as previous ones.

Dusty Feet performed an eclectic piece set in Alice Springs, about red wine and the vocab used to describe it. The act was fun and flirtatious, but not danced consistently strongly across the three girls. It made a nice change to see distinct costumes used and was reminiscent of a day at the races.

There were laughs for “This Page Intentionally Left Blank”, performed by Unkempt Dance – winners of last year’s award. It’s not much in terms of actual dance, but the idea, entertainment value and personalities of the girls made it immediately likeable and for anyone who’s tried to assemble flatpack furniture, or describe awkward contemporary dance moves, this combination of the two was a hoot, as were their danced instructions of “how to breed competition between your children” and “how to move a dead body”. A good note to complete the night!