ÌÇÐÄlogoÃ×·ÆÍà Dancers Standing Up for the Voiceless Out of 350 schools in Australia, MLC Senior School Wakakirri Dance Team has placed 2nd for their story dance routine, The Price of Low Cost, a story revealing the smokescreen of factory working conditions that belies the cost of mass-produced goods for western society. Wakakirri is the biggest performing arts event for schools with over 20,000 participating from across Australia every year in the ‘Story of the Year’, where they create their own story to dance routines. Over 400 girls from ÌÇÐÄlogoÃ×·ÆÍà participate every year, these include senior and junior dancers as well as an Entertainment crew who work behind the scenes on all of the technical requirements. ÌÇÐÄlogoÃ×·ÆÍà entered in both the Secondary and Primary School Challenges this year and the results have been outstanding. At the start of each year, dance teachers challenge the girls to create a story for Wakakirri that gives a voice to the voiceless. The stimulus for the Senior girls in 2019 was the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse which occurred in Bangladesh in 2013. There was a death toll of over one thousand people. In the NSW competition, ÌÇÐÄlogoÃ×·ÆÍÃ’s Senior dancers received the Best Raising Awareness Story Award and were triumphant in receiving the Division 1 Story of the Year, the first time ÌÇÐÄlogoÃ×·ÆÍà has won a major award at Wakakirri, and the award that catapulted them into the National competition where they secured second place in Australia. The Seniors also won the following State Awards: Excellent Lead Cast, Excellent Supporting Cast, Excellent Theme/Concept, Excellent Construction and Clarity, Excellent Overall Set Design. The Judges comment on the evening was: ‘A beautiful, confronting and powerful performance creating awareness to the empath degree. A commending performance from the two protagonists not only in dance but dramatically. Quite disturbing at times which is what confronts and tightens the performance. The soundtrack is haunting and driven, the set movements and transitions were seamless and executed extremely well by the onstage crew. Overall the power behind the message is dynamic and direct.’ October 2019