The Vic Dance Festival also brought Emmy award-winning choreographer Travis Wall from American TV show So You Think You Can Dance to Warrnambool.

The event, which was founded by Peterborough’s Kate Meade, started in Colac in 2013 with just 217 students. “Over that time it has just exploded in numbers,” Mrs Meade said.

“The festival was founded for regional dancers to be able to have the opportunity to dance with some of, I always said, Australia’s best but the festival now attracts international artists and that’s what we’ve got here with Travis Wall.”

The festival is usually held once a year and travels around the state, but the last two events have been held in Melbourne. “Moving the festival to Melbourne has been great because there’s lots of numbers but we didn’t want to sell out the heart and soul of the festival, and that was for regional dancers,” Mrs Meade said.

She said it was the first time the festival had held two events in one year, the first held in February at the Royal Exhibition Buildings at Carlton Gardens.

“We filled that with dance and now we’ve filled the basketball stadium in Warrnambool with dance, so it’s great,” she said. “What makes this event different from anything else that’s happening in Australia is it’s a non-competitive dance environment. They’re here just to learn and be inspired.”

The mix of workshops and performances include jazz, musical theatre, contemporary dance, ballet and  Latin dance styles. “We’ve tried to expose the dance students to as many different genres as we can,” Mrs Meade said.

Mrs Meeade said she hoped the success of the festival would help attract other major events to the city. “Warrnambool is so beautiful and iconic, and it means that people have a made a weekend of this so they’ve been able to come along the Great Ocean Road, stay locally, bring the family,” she said.