Review: Concrete Echoes, choreographed by Ta’alili
Produced by STRUT Dance and Performing Lines for Perth Festival
Forrest Place, Wednesday 25 February 2026
Review by Nina Levy
2026 marks the fourth iteration of STRUT Dance’s Perth Moves program, and what a gift it is, with three free public performances in the city’s heart during Perth Festival.
The second of these is Concrete Echoes, choreographed by Aotearoa/New Zealand performance group Ta’alili (Aloali’i Tapu and Tori Manley-Tapu) in response to the concrete surrounds of the venue – the Forrest Place outdoor shopping mall.
As mentioned in the program, before colonisation Forrest Place was a gathering place for Boorloo/Perth’s traditional owners, the Whadjuk Noongar people. Drawing on the various cultural and ethnic backgrounds of the cast of nine independent dancers, who are based around Australia and Aotearoa, this contemporary dance work seeks to “soften” the concrete environment with their stories and movement, so that it can, once again, be a place of gathering.
Fittingly for a work presented in an urban environment, several of the dancers are trained in street styles; hip-hop, break, krump. Drawing on those traditions, the performance takes place at ground level on a huge tarkett circle, the audience forming a break-style cypher whose shape lighting designer Chloe Ogilvie echoes in a projection on one the buildings.
While there is a strong sense of cohesion across the cast, and the work is framed and interspersed with ensemble work, we get to know each dancer via solos and duets, whether abstract or literal, verbal or physical.
Set to tracks created for this work by three different Aotearoa-based composers – Samara Alofa, Benny Jennings and Hannah Lynch – the interplay between movement and score is one of the work’s strengths, but no specific credits have been made available.
An early standout solo comes from Peni Fakaua. To a soundscape of disembodied voices against sporadic drums and crackles, he carves and envelops space, occasionally splintered by the clapping of his hands. Twisting and turning fluidly he frames Gabriela Quinsacara who gestures slowly and purposefully, their arms rowing and winding.
Throughout the work there’s sonic competition from pop music playing at a nearby frozen yoghurt outlet and from the City of Perth’s street sweeping vans. Though this contributes to the aforementioned contrast between urbanity and “softening”, at the work’s quieter moments I found it intrusive, in particular during a powerful grappling and colliding duet between Cameron Park and Angie Boladeras. Taking place against a cascading series of synthesized notes and whistling sounds, this was a favourite moment of mine, in spite of the noise pollution. Later in the work Sebastian Geilings and Peni Fakaua perform another outstanding duet, entwining and unwinding to blurred and wobbling synth notes.
For those who saw 2025 Perth Moves work Manifest, one of the titular echoes is that work’s didacticism, which is present in many of the spoken word offerings. Standing amongst the audience, Ian ‘H.O.O.D’ de Mello’s razor sharp wordsmithing oscillates between dreaming of utopia and damning reality, with witty re-writes of the neon H&M sign glowing above him. For contemporary dance history buffs there’s another pleasing reference from Isabella Stone later in the work, but no spoilers here.
Running at just under 90 minutes, Concrete Echoes feels too long. Bearing in mind that the work was created and rehearsed in about a month, I wonder if the creative team ran out of time to edit. While there is no section that feels superfluous, each one would have benefitted from being shortened. At times I found spoken sections not just long but overly didactic – as though the artists thought we might not understand the message unless it was spelled out.
I wonder, too, about the absence of Noongar voices in a work made on their land, to cut through the concrete of colonisation.
Nonetheless, Concrete Echoes keeps giving moments of beauty and clarity. Just before the work’s final moments Sebastian Geilings’s liquid solo in an ocean of blue light reflects and accentuates the score’s gentle ripples and trickles, drips and drops.
If you’re in Boorloo/Perth, it’s worth taking the time to gather around the dancers and experience this latest gift from Perth Moves, a gentle but powerful reshaping of the concrete jungle.
Concrete Echoes continues until 27 February.
Another free Perth Moves work, Cercles, will be performed in Forrest Place 26-28 February.
-Nina Levy