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Airdate: Dance Academy

Here comes the 26 part ABC drama following six teenagers at a National Academy of Dance, prioritised on ABC1 instead of ABC3.

Dance Academy will premiere this month on the ABC. The 26 part drama following six teenagers at a National Academy of Dance promises to be high on the radar of teens and tweens.

The series will premiere at 5:20pm Monday, May 31 at on ABC1 and is repeated at 3:40pm Sunday, June 6 at on ABC3.

The cast includes Xenia Goodwin and former Home and Away actor Jordan Rodrigues.

This is the second time a new children’s series which was due to premiere on ABC3 will launch on ABC1, following Dead Gorgeous. ABC3 had a Logie win for My Place, upstaging its adult drama output, but the series didn’t fare well in a prime Sunday repeat on ABC1.

If Dance Academy proves as popular as Dead Gorgeous or Escape from Scorpion Island it should do well.

Seen through the eyes of Tara Webster (Xenia Goodwin) this isn’t just about tutus and pointe shoes. This is the year Tara will leave her home on the farm and be tested not only on her abilities to dance but to love, build friendships, celebrate triumphs and endure disappointments.

Episode 1: Learning To Fly
Country girl Tara Webster travels to Sydney to audition for the prestigious National Academy of Dance. It’s a tumultuous week as she realises her dream of becoming a dancer is going to be a lot more difficult than she ever anticipated.

10 Responses

  1. scorpion island, prank patrol and dead gorgeous? cool. i agree with prank patrol and dead gorgeous being popular. i have a friend who was in my place but i didn’t really like that show. i don’t bother watching dance academy. i’m just waiting for another series of dead gorgeous.

  2. Having run this site for nearly 3.5 years I can tell you that Scorpion Island, Prank Patrol and Dead Gorgeous have certainly resonated with younger viewers. Not so much for My Place, which is probably the finer achievement.

  3. tasmanian devil:
    I didn’t state that Dance Academy was reality TV rubbish at all. I mentioned we rarely see any live action series for children, that isn’t set in a school based environment, outside of reality TV series.

    Escape from Scorpion Island and Prank Patrol are popular based on what exactly? ratings only cover a small amount ( a few thousand) of people, and aren’t accurate at all. While ratings might state ‘x’ amount of people watched a TV show, they realistically don’t even know if the majority even had the TV on.

    I wouldn’t class My Place as quality drama either, or even interesting either. My Place seemed solely focused on teaching a lesson each episode, with many episodes been far too politically correct.

    It would be good to see more new series with on-going stories (or even on-going elements), that aren’t solely school based, or simply dealing with issues, or dumbed down for children.

    The 1990s offered a large amount of variety and well written TV series, especially in animation. So I don’t see why more modern TV series can’t be just as good.

  4. Kirben, when I say “classy”, read thoughtfully written characters, a brilliant cast, beautiful dance sequences, fantastic attention detail, art direction, music, dramatic arcs … get the drift?

  5. @ Kirben – Read the article, it’s not “reality TV rubbish” but a *Scripted* drama series. I don’t know why you seem to act like an expert in this field, because clearly you are out of touch regarding what kids like to watch these days (Prank Patrol and Scorpion Island are two of ABC’s most popular childrens shows despite you labelling them “reality TV rubbish”). If ABC’s childrens TV schedules were filled with quality dramas like My Place instead of “reality TV rubbish” I wouldn’t be surprised if ratings dropped and complaints were sent in.

  6. How is this series classy or high end? it looks like another generic competition series, set in a school environment again. We rarely seem to get any new live action series, that isn’t set in a school environment, other than reality TV rubbish.

    Children won’t watch simply because there isn’t anything else on TV, they would more likely do other activities. I frequently think the TV networks would be shocked, if they realized just how many people have the TV turned off.

    There are so very new series for children shown on the ABC lately, and the new series continue to get worse and worse (i.e. generic, silly, stupid) in terms of content.

  7. Should do well for it’s timeslot considering in the absence of a Pay TV service in most homes the alternative that No Kid should have to sit through are game shows.

  8. Yes – three big kids blocks on 1, 2 and 3 all day is too much. HIgh end Aussie drama series like Dance Academy should premier on 1. The kids block on 2 from 10 to 4 should be on 3, allowing 2 to re-define itself as the edgier, riskier, highbrow/lowbrow with some catchups/repeats. At present, 3 is not diverse enough or good enough -just endless repeats and a lot of dubious product at that – very American and very violent. I also find the American style presenters superficial at best. Kim Dalton is right to bring in Channel controllers to brand each channel – 3 is in desperate need of brand leadership and better content.

  9. If every show is going to premiere on ABC1, then what’s the point of having a 15 hour kids TV channel? 90% of ABC3’s content now is repeats and I can see that the ABC was not ready for this big of a step yet. They should either merge the ABC2 For Kids block into ABC3 (with each taking half the schedule) and put something else on in the daytime on ABC2, or vice versa with ABC2 airing the dual kids block in the daytime and ABC3 being freed up for something else, but the chances of that happening are practically nil.

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