By arts editor HELEN MUSA

When choreographer Miranda Wheen decided to name her current show All In, she wasn’t kidding.

For the production coming up at Belco Arts this weekend, her Western Sydney-based company Dance Makers Collective joins together with local dance artists from Project Dust, Apsaras Arts Canberra and Quantum Leap Australia to present what they’re calling “the best dance party you’ve ever been to”, complete with music by Fiona Hill.

They’ve been working with almost 40 dancers and choreographers from a range of dance backgrounds, including traditional and classical dancers from different cultures, contemporary dancers and street dancers.

Here the show is being presented by Dance Makers Collective along with Canberra Theatre Centre and Belco Arts.

When I catch up with Wheen by phone in Perth after she’s been on the road for two months, she tells me that All In has been on a grand tour taking in Launceston, Bathurst, Dubbo, Leeton, Wagga Wagga, Bondi and, most recently, Margaret River and Bunbury.

Wheen and her troupe of eight core dancers have engaged with local dance companies wherever they go and now it’s time to do the same in Canberra.

Their preference is to perform in town hall-type settings where the audience sits around on various sides, but their first choice, Albert Hall, is undergoing refurbishment, so they negotiated with Belco Arts.

There they will perform in the centre’s big black box, but some of the seating will be retracted to allow a traverse staging, with the audience seated on two sides.

Wheen is very familiar to Canberra audiences, having for many years performed with Elizabeth Dalman’s Mirramu Creative Arts Centre and with artists such as Cadi McCarthy and Vivienne Rogis.

Her own company, based in Seven Hills, has been running for 10 years, during which time she’s also been raising children and, as she says, been “very busy”.

The core of All In will be a 40-minute segment performed by her company, but they’ve also been working with Apsaras, which specialises in Bharatanatyam, with Quantum Leap Australia and with  First Nations contemporary dance group Project Dust, to create their own segments, as well as sections where they all work together.

In some centres they’ve toured to, depending on the size of the local dance company, they’ve seen up to 50 people on stage at once and then, when they invite the audience to “jump on stage”, it can be as many as 100.

You’ll just have to be there to see what happens.

All In, at The Theatre, Belconnen Arts Centre, September 24 – 26. Bookings here 

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