For over 30 years, the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts has been
helping students realise their dreams of successful careers in the performing arts and entertainment industries.
Contact us
ECU Mount Lawley Campus
2 Bradford Street Mount Lawley
Perth, Western Australia
Phone: 134 328
Our world-class teaching staff and specialist tutors share the knowledge and skills gained from professional experience on stage and behind the scenes.
Taught by WAAPA’s staff and industry professionals, our weekend and holiday workshops offer practical tuition in areas such as acting, singing, music, dance and music theatre.
WAAPA is excited to offer a brand new Corporate Training program. Comprised of leading artists, practitioners and educators with real world experience of translating professional performing arts training and advanced techniques into tangible skills for individuals and organisations.
WAAPA would not be the thriving performance institution and community
it is today without the generous help and support of our donors, sponsors, Friends and alumni.
WAAPA postgraduate students and staff are involved in research and collaboration across the broadest spectrum of performing arts disciplines – ranging from music (classical, jazz, contemporary, opera, composition) to music theatre, acting, performance, dance, production and design, arts management, and more.
WAAPA fosters cross-cultural exchange through global partnerships, projects, and performances, welcoming international
students and engaging in mobility experiences, enhancing its reputation as a leading institution for performing arts education.
Hickey-Moody, A., Pollitt, J., Blaise, M. (2025). RSVP Cycles: Post Humanist Pedagogies. New Materialist Affirmations: Creative Research Interventions in Methods and Practice (41-60). Edinburgh University Press Ltd. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1515/9781399505376.
Journal Articles
Gray, E., Ullman, J., Blaise, M., Pollitt, J. (2025). Masculinism, institutional violence and #MeToo: understanding Australian University responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 57(2), 159-175. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220620.2024.2317386.
Pollitt, J. (2025). Weather under pressure: kin/aesthetic practice and dancerly scores for unstable times. Swamphen: a Journal of Cultural Ecology (ASLEC-ANZ), 11(-), 16 pages. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.60162/swamphen.11.18131.
Rachev, R., Pollitt, J., Nicoletti, E. (2025). Clouds Running Out of Juice: A Special Podcast Episode Featuring Tim Winton’s Climate Fiction. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 2025(Article in press), 15 pages. https://doi.org/10.1017/aee.2025.10050.
Blaise, M., Gray, E., Pollitt, J., Acton, R., Barraclough, S., Bodén, L., Cullen, F., Dekker, K., Gröndal, H., Leon-Dyer, S., Murray, P., Nordstrom, S., Rahm, L., Sjödin, ES., Tudor, R. (2024). Creatively attending to unfinished business, everyday sexisms, COVID-19, and Higher Education: The #FEAS FAKE JOURNAL. The Routledge International Handbook of Transdisciplinary Feminist Research and Methodological Praxis (380-412). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003303558-45.
Journal Articles
Mereweather, J., Pollitt, J., Blaise, M. (2024). Young Children Moving through Ecological Anxiety and Grief: Dancing with Demolition. Journal of Dance Education, 2024(Article in press), 10 pages. https://doi.org/10.1080/15290824.2024.2403757.
McKenzie, V., Pollitt, J., Sun, E. (2024). TRANSLATE | TRANSFORM | TRANSDISCIPLINE: Collaborative practice across divides. Axon: Creative Explorations, 14(1), 15 pages. https://doi.org/10.54375/001/5e1qzvv97s.
Pollitt, J., Blue, L., Jones, D., Fernandez, E. (2024). Forecast. [Forecast concept and development in collaboration with AGWA, The WA Bureau of Meteorology and invited artists Dianne Jones and Eva Fernandez]. Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) Gallery 09.
Pollitt, J. (2023). Choreographies of Presence: Improvisation as Feminist Practice. Dance Research Methodologies: Ethics, Orientations and Practices (48-60). Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003145615.
Journal Articles
Gray, E., Ullman, J., Blaise, M., Pollitt, J. (2023). ‘I'm broken but I'm alive’: gender, COVID-19 and higher education in Australia. Higher Education Research and Development, 42(3), 588-602. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2022.2096576.
Blue, L., Pollitt, J., Blaise, M. (2023). Conversations with rain: Proposing poetic and non-linear interpretation strategies in the Art Gallery. International Journal of Education and the Arts, 24(1.2), 12 pages. https://doi.org/10.26209/ijea24si1.2.
Pollitt, J., Gray, E., Blaise, M., Ullman, J., Fishwick, E. (2023). Performing feminist research: creative tactics for communicating COVID-19, gender, and higher education research. Gender and Education, 35(5), 487-504. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2023.2213727.
Creative Arts Research Outputs
Pollitt, J. (2023). All ways fire she gives. Westerly. 68.
Pollitt, J., Blaise, M., Gray, E. (2022). Enacting a feminist pause: Interrupting patriarchal productivity in higher education. Creative Approaches to Health Education: New Ways of Thinking, Making, Doing, Teaching and Learning (28-40). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003126508-3.
Blaise, M., Pollitt, J., Merewether, J., Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (2022). Resilience as More-Than-Human. Young People and Thinking Technologies for the Anthropocene (17-30). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Journal Articles
Mauro-Flude, N., Pollitt, J. (2022). I am _your_ Pyrate Dancer: Choreographic Computabilities Dancing Inside the Interstices of a Visceral World. Leonardo, 2022(November 28), 55-62. https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02301.
Gray, EM., Pollitt, J., Blaise, M. (2022). Between activism and academia: Zine-making as a feminist response to COVID-19. Gender and Education, 34(8), 887-905. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2021.1931045.
Berry, A., Pollitt, J., Nelson, N., Hodgins, BD., Wintoneak, V. (2022). Dis/orientating the Early Childhood Sensorium: A Palate Making Menu for Public Pedagogy. Journal of Childhood Studies, 47(3), 74-91. https://doi.org/10.18357/jcs202218330.
Creative Arts Research Outputs
Pollitt, J., Blaise, M., Gray, E. (2022). #FEAS Unfinished Business. [Exhibition of mixed media works plus #FEAS archive and videos]. Spectrum Gallery.
Pollitt, J., Blaise, M., Rooney, T. (2021). Weather bodies: Experimenting with dance improvisation in environmental education in the early years. Environmental Education Research, 27(8), 1141-1151. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2021.1926434.
Pahara, T., Pollitt, J., Raheem, A., Schmidt, T. (2021). Ensemblography: Making collaboration through performing writing. Global Performance Studies, 4(2), 1-15. https://doi.org/10.33303/gpsv4n2a2.
Pollitt, J., Kind, S., Delgado Vintimilla , C., Blue, L. (2021). Choreographing collaboratories: studios of situated improvisations. Children's Geographies, 2021(Article in press), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2021.2006144.
Pollitt, J. (2019). The State of Dancingness: Staying with Leaving. PARtake: The Journal of Performance as Research, 2(2), Article no. 4. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecuworkspost2013/5904.
Creative Arts Research Outputs
Pollitt, J., Blue, L., Blaise, M. (2019). Conversations with rain: a multi-platform research-creation project. Art Gallery of Western Australia. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecuworkspost2013/8939.
Pollitt, J. (2017). She Writes like She Dances: Response and radical impermanence in writing as dancing. Choreographic Practices, 8(2), 199-218. https://doi.org/10.1386/chor.8.2.199_1.
Francis, M., Pollitt, J., Leach, P., Polain, M. (2012). Quiet Beast. Jo Pollitt and Paea Leach.
Lehrer, J., McCarthy, K., Peacock, S., Pollitt, J., Whaites, M. (2012). Diversify. Michael Whaites.
Research Projects
Contemporary Ecofeminist Education: a critical and creative response to ecofeminists legacy of human-environment relations in crisis, Academic Staff Association of Edith Cowan University, Solidarity Research Fund (SRF), 2024 ‑ 2025, $14,833.
Early-Career Creative and Performance Leadership Fellowships, Forrest Research Foundation, Early-Career Creative and Performance Leadership Fellowships, 2022 ‑ 2023, $239,804.
Master of Arts (Performing Arts), Talking back: A new theatrical representation of Noongar women's experience
Master of Education, PAYING ATTENTION TO WATER RELATIONS: Poetic Inquiry and Pedagogical documentation as curious practices
Master of Education, Drama, Education, Artistry: Australian Practitioners Fostering Connection Across Cultures and Disciplines in China
Doctor of Philosophy, Slow Choreographies: Addressing everyday sexisms in Australian Universities through embodied creative methods.
Doctor of Philosophy, Walking-With Derbarl Yerrigan/Swan River: Experimentations With Methodological and Pedagogical Practices in Early Childhood Education