Hello everyone, 

2025 Semester 1 Showcase Season 

We have well and truly kicked off our 2025 mid year Showcase season with the exceptional musical talents of our students and Music faculty being showcased at the Big Night Out concerts last week and Vivo concerts this week.  Huge congratulations to all the performers and technical crew for an outstanding display of skill and virtuosity.

This season continues next week with Dance Showcase. Two evenings dedicated to classwork across all year groups and two evenings showcasing the talents and artistry of our senior Dance students including year 12 HSC composition works being performed by younger dance students.  Our dancers then continue their performance season by presenting their works at 'In The Spotlight Dance Festival' - a DET arts initiative providing performance opportunities for dance students from Kindergarten to Year 12. 'In The Spotlight Dance Festival' is co-ordinated and Artistically Directed by two members of our Dance Faculty, Emma Bathgate-Petersen and Sarah Banks.  Thank you to these dance teachers for continuing to provide this enriching opportunity for students across Sydney.

The Drama Showcase season follows with two evenings of theatrical performances from our talented Drama students on Wednesday and Thursday evenings in Week 9.

We hope you all have the chance to see some of these amazing performances as they are truly not to be missed!

2026 Subject Selection

Subject Selection for 2026 will be happening next term for students currently in Years 7, 8 and 10.  

Subject selection is an important and exciting milestone for high school students at Newtown High School of the Performing Arts because it empowers them to shape their own educational journey based on their passions, strengths, and future goals. At a school that values creativity and individuality, selecting subjects allows students to focus on their preferred art forms—such as dance, drama, music, or visual arts—while also balancing academic growth in core disciplines. This process not only fosters independence and self-awareness but also opens up pathways to future careers or further study in both the arts and other fields. The excitement comes from the freedom to explore new challenges, express personal identity through learning, and take meaningful steps toward their future by building a variety of necessary skills and attributes through an arts education.

As you can imagine, a lot of careful planning goes into building a rigorous and meaningful curriculum for students. Therefore, it is important students and parents take the time to consider subject choices based on interest, aptitude and ability.

Course information booklets will be provided to students late this term and early next term through Google classroom.  Parents will also receive this information via email.

Uniform

As you are all aware, full school uniform is an expectation of all students.  Please purchase appropriate winter items for these colder months through Pickles to ensure your child is appropriately dressed.  Students should be wearing NHSPA shirt, trousers/skirt, school jumper/hoodie and black leather shoes.  

St George’s Hall Trust Fund  

• $70,000 has been contributed to air-conditioning in St George’s Hall and two classrooms within H Block.   

• This Trust Fund provides extra funding each year to the Dance, Drama, Music and Visual Arts faculties. This extra funding assists with student scholarships, awards and master class practitioners to enable extension opportunities and to develop the talent of creative and performing arts students. In 2024 the funding enabled the following:   

• Dance – Paul Knobloch, from the Australian Ballet, to teach and choreograph with Year 10, 11 & 12 Dancers.  

• Drama – A Series of Public Apologies collaboration with award winning director, Warwick Doddrell 

• Music – purchase of resources for ensembles and repairs to music equipment  

• Visual Arts – Scott Owen workshop, HSC Material Worlds – Contemporary Asian Art presentation, installing of a hanging system in the St George’s Gallery and the purchase of camera equipment. 

Library Fund 

The Library Fund is a new tax-deductible fund established this year. Library Fund donations will be used for the following: 

• new books 

• computer/software and hardware 

• library furniture such as bookshelves, booth seating, library displays and archival preservation

Donations made to the School Library Fund or the St George’s Hall Trust Fund are fully tax-deductible as charitable contributions under the ATO provisions. 

Tax deductible donations can be made using our online payment portal or by visiting the school office during school hours (8.30am – 3.00pm). For assistance making payments online, please visit: How to make a payment online – School Bytes 

For further information on donating funds please contact, Mr Adam Oliver, Business Manager on 9519 1544 or email the school at newtown-h.school@det.nsw.edu.au 

Calling All Young Fashion Innovators!
Join the Flip Fashion Forever Workshop These Holidays!

Are you passionate about fashion, creativity, and sustainability? Do you love reimagining style and giving old clothes a new life? Then Flip Fashion Forever is the holiday workshop for you!

Running from 14–18 July, this dynamic five-day program at the Inner West Sustainability Hub in Summer Hill is designed especially for school-aged students who want to explore the world of ethical and innovative fashion. It’s the perfect opportunity for Textiles and Design students, or anyone interested in fashion, to level up their skills and creativity in a fun, inclusive environment.

As mentioned in our previous bulletin, Year 12 Textiles student Tess Clark attended this workshop earlier in the year and found it a valuable and inspiring experience.

Highlights include:

• Working with young fashion mentors (some featured in Vogue and Australian Fashion Week)

• Exclusive access to Re Place, a secondhand fashion warehouse

• $20 thrift voucher, bundles of fabric, and a fully equipped studio

• A hands-on way to learn sustainable fashion practices and support neurodiverse learning styles

Don’t miss your chance to be part of the next generation of socially responsible fashion leaders.

Spots are limited — book now and be part of the change.
More information and registration see the link below: https://events.humanitix.com/flip-fashion-forever-6xdwldx2

The Newtown High School magazine of 1979 provides glimpses of a culturally diverse and intensely sports-oriented school. It also captures a school culture which granted students a broad licence for self expression via opinion pieces, caricatures and confessional narratives about wayward behaviour. Iliya Trajkovski from Year 10, for instance, penned a poem about students running circles round trainee teachers:

They think they send you to the staffroom

But you go for a smoke in the men's room.

When the inspector came into the room, 

The student teacher was nervous like a groom. 

As a counterpoint, one of the student teachers praised the school culture for its emphasis on positive relationships, rather than a punitive hierarchy: The need for a strict formality and a harsh authoritarianism is minimised at Newtown because… respect and liking for each other seems to be the best way of relating…  

In 1979 the English department was open enough to allow Year 11 student Strasse Stojanovsk to run with an opinion piece titled “KILL SHAKESPEARE”. Strasse’s argument that there should be a greater emphasis on “more recent literature” proved prescient, given later changes in the HSC English syllabus.  Another Year 11 student Sebastian Parison characterised his English teacher, Ms Jaundrell, as a deadly siren: “After leaving the lesson you might have to be admitted to a psychiatric centre, for intensive care, due to some strange spell Ms Jaundrell casts on you”. Here admiration for the commanding presence of the female teacher hovers in the subtext. 

Beyond such glimpses of robust student humour, there are snapshots of student gratitude for the many experiences which enriched their worlds. In the words of Angelo Almeida, “At first [7E] thought that debating was ridiculous but after making hard work of our first debate, our performance improved immensely”. Angelo praised the debating topic “Are migrants given a fair go?” and enthused over the Year 7 debating champ: “As soon as he stands in front of the class he has a magical stance, a perturbing stare and an exciting power which he developed with a unique brand of humour”. It is to be wondered how Angelo Almeida, who could only have been twelve or thirteen, channeled his own impressive wordcraft in his later years…  

One of the distinct threads linking the Newtown High School of the past with the NHSPA of the present is an engagement with music, dance and theatre - although the focus on an Arts education is clearly amplified in the current school culture. 

In 1979 Drago Stajanovic, from Year 8, praised a guitar elective taught by Mr Barnett  in which the boys learned to produce music from scratch: “We first started off learning the notes, about five of them. Then we started with some very simple songs. As the year went on, we learned more notes and more songs. The songs are really tops! Some of them are “Grease”, “Living next door to Alice”, “Stumblin’ In”, “Country Roads” and many more”. In the same year Newtown High School competed against Marrickville Girls, Petersham Girls, Dulwich High and Tempe High in events involving the production of sculpture, mimed plays, short story submissions, public speaking, verse speaking, ceramics, photography, singing, dancing and instrumental music. 

The most eloquent piece of student writing in the school magazine of 1979 involved an extended discussion of the “Disco Scene” by Paul Epsimos, a Year 12 student who likened the disco “craze” to a  “pounding beast” and “aphrodisiac” which allowed dancers to “get up and live out their fantasies”. Paul Epsimos observed that in a disco, “you are the star, not the musicians”, an insight capturing the immense pull of the blockbuster Saturday Night Fever in Australia some twelve months previously. 

It would appear from the cartoon pasted below that Year 12 student Ivan Jersek cut quite a figure on the dance floor, more specifically Maxy’s disco in Sydney’s George Street. According to the City of Sydney Archives, Maxy's Roller Disco was established in 1977 on the site of a defunct cinema. 

In a school fundraiser held to support Ivan’s efforts to journey to Queensland as a state basketball rep for NSW, Ivan “played as a lady teacher”, delighting Year 7 student Billy Dabaga, with the spectacle of his well coiffed drag. Doubtless Ivan's acts of creative self expression would generate similar appreciation at NHSPA today.

When Melissa Toogood heard she had been appointed Director of Dance at The Juilliard school, one of the first people she called was her old high school teacher.

“I never would have achieved what I’ve achieved if it weren’t for Newtown High School of the Performing Arts,” she said.

“To have a public school providing mentorship at the level they do is just incredible.”

The internationally acclaimed dancer admits to a little trepidation when contemplating her senior post at one of the world’s most prestigious performing arts education institutions.

“This is the culmination of a lifetime of work, so I have many feelings,” she said.

“I’m hugely excited and a little scared. But if fear ever stopped me doing anything, I would never have stepped on a stage in the first place.”

Melissa’s journey towards Julliard, in Manhattan’s upper west side, started in Campbelltown, in Sydney’s south-east. It took off when she auditioned for Newtown.

“I saw the Newtown kids perform at School Spectacular when I was in Year 7 at another school, and I thought that’s a whole other level, I want to be on that level. That’s why I auditioned to come here,” she recalled while visiting her former school.

During the visit, M Toogood met some year 11 and 12 students majoring in her specialty – contemporary dance. Yuuki Hiwatashi was among the students lucky enough to catch up with Ms Toogood during the visit.

“It’s just amazing that someone from our school is now the head of the dance division at Juilliard,” Yuuki said.

“To have a role model like this to inspire people like me is fantastic.

“It’s so uplifting to know that she learned in the same studios as us and now she’s gone off and done such incredible things.”

Alison McKellar, the school’s relieving dance head teacher, said the whole school community was sharing in Ms Toogood’s success.

“It’s such a credit to this school and public education,” Ms McKellar said. 

“It’s just so exciting that we can now show the dance students at Newtown that incredible things really are possible.

“It’s such a credit to Dr John Mullins, who was the head of dance when Melissa was here, that he could help her develop to where she is today.”

Despite being firmly focused on her new chapter, Melissa happily reminisces about life as an aspiring young dancer at high school.

“It’s so exciting for these students. They’re at the beginning of their journey in a lot of ways, even though they’re ending high school,” she said.

“This was me - it feels like a lifetime ago but many of the teachings are still with me.

“I’ll never forgot what this school has done for me.”

At 13, Melissa Toogood took a deep breath and made a call that changed her life.

The teenage dancer from Campbelltown had just watched students from Newtown’s School of Performing Arts at the annual Schools Spectacular. She was blown away.

“I called the school and I asked to audition,” she says. “I was scared. But, hey, it paid off.”

She was accepted and began taking her first steps towards an international contemporary dance career.

“You can’t wait for an opportunity to come your way. I’m a shy person, but when it’s mattered, I’m willing to put myself out there,” she says.

Three decades on, Toogood’s stellar career has just taken a giant leap. She has been appointed dean and director of the Juilliard School’s dance division in New York, one of the world’s leading performing arts institutions.

She will be responsible for nurturing a new generation of contemporary dancers and will have up to 90 young dance students under her wing. It will mean largely moving away from performing, but at 43, she is ready to step out of that limelight.

“I still want to live an artful life,” she says. “But I don’t want to be the one making it all the time any more. I’ll be able to put together all these skills that I’ve already been working on into one job, at a time when I feel more inspired to help other artists with their careers than my own.”

Toogood has spent most of her career in New York. She went to the United States at 18 to pursue her dance studies, and since then she’s worked with many leading dance companies and choreographers.

She was a member of the innovative Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and was among the last group of dancers to be trained by the legendary choreographer. Toogood also began teaching at his invitation.

She received a major New York dance award in 2015 for her performances which were described as “precise and fluid, elegant and electric”.

Offstage, Toogood has worked as a rehearsal director, artistic associate, choreographer, teacher and been on the faculty at Princeton University, Rutgers University and New York Theatre Ballet School.

It’s a long way from growing up in a sports-loving family in Sydney’s western suburbs.

“My parents put me in dance when I was really little because it’s just something you did,” she says. “It just happened that it really spoke to me, and I was committed to it from a very young age.”

She credits her career to Australia’s public education system, and especially to Newtown School of Performing Arts.

“It’s a public school, so it was free – which was the only way I was going to be able to go,” she says.

She believes arts education should be available to everyone.

“Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to fulfil my potential,” Toogood says. “It encourages creativity, critical thinking and empathy. As we move forward, all these things are skills that kids will need.”

She returned to Sydney more than two years ago in the aftermath of the pandemic. Since then, she has worked with Sydney Dance Company, Bangarra, Seet Dance and Victorian College of the Arts.

Now she’s ready to return to the Big Apple along with her American visual artist husband, Kenneth E. Parris III, and their seven-year-old son. She takes up the appointment on July 1.

She acknowledges being nervous about her new role – just as she was as a plucky 13-year-old – but relishes the chance to give back.

“I’ll be setting the vision for the school and be a mentor to the students … and really help them mature as artists.”

To support learners in developing effective study habits the school will run an after-school study centre during term times on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday afternoons from 3:25pm-5:00pm in the school Library.

This is open to all students, providing a quiet environment in which focussed study could take place.

Whilst attendance every week is not compulsory, should your child wish to use this facility, it is recommended that they be regular in their attendance for effective learning to occur.

The study centre will be supervised by a staff member between the times above to assist learners with organisation, planning, and developing successful study habits should they so wish.

This is an excellent opportunity for students to form small study teams to work together to improve their understanding of concepts and spur each other on to achieve a personal best in their subjects.

Expectations for attendance are as follows:

Students

• respect the rights of other learners and so maintain a quiet learning environment.

• desire to improve their performance in subjects.

• use this time productively.

• be regular in attendance.

The centre has been shown to be an effective way for improving students' results, confidence, and organisation in an enjoyable, relaxed environment.

THE ASSC IS A QUIET SPACE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR LEARNING AND SEEK HELP FROM STAFF