The biggest dance stage in Newcastle isn't in a theatre, and it's not in a spring-floored gymnastic gym. There's no roof when it rains and little protection from the chill on a cold night.
The boards aren't made of timber; they're made of turf. But for 12 weeks of the year, the dancers who own them play to a stadium of over 25,000 spectators.
On a good night, swimming in the lights and the roar of a local crowd, it feels like the place could lift off the ground. It keeps them coming back - it's the most exciting show in town, and they love it. It's the moment when all the training pays off.
When you watch the Newcastle Knights dance squad land a perfectly executed routine on game day, seemingly like the moves come to them naturally, it can be easy to think that what they're doing is, well, easy. They move like gravity doesn't strictly apply, and every move is done with effortless poise and a natural sense of rhythm and timing. But that's the whole point.
"Ultimately, a dancer's job is to make it look easy," the squad's director, Alexandra Tsambos, said, "They make you want to get up and do it yourself - that's the end goal. We want to make it look easy, but that comes from experience and ability."
The Knights dancers are at the top of their game. They're typically 18 or 19 and have been dancing for most of their lives - many since they could walk. Tsambos started dancing when she was three and is classically trained.
They're also fit. Each training session, which runs weekly during the football season, only begins after the dancers have finished their full-time commitments (the dance squad is not a full-time job) and kicks off with an hour of high-intensity, repetitive work designed to push the athletes' endurance to the limits.
A routine on game night might run for around two-and-a-half minutes, but there isn't an ounce of muscle or a shred of stamina that isn't tested. After an hour of sprinting, the real training begins.
Cheer is a demanding, full-throttle, technically maniacal sport. The dancers must not only be able to perform at the elite level technically and physically but also be able to act as game ambassadors. When they're not performing breathtaking routines on the field, they're speaking with fans, representing the club at events, and being the face of the game.
The first six weeks of their pre-season training dedicate a portion of each session to theoretical study where the performers become accustomed to the club's sponsors, partners and commitments, and the game's ethos.
Many dancers who perform each week are full-time university students or hold down full-time work. They train at night, perform as many as three technically perfect routines to thousands of fans a night for the weekend's men's and women's NRL games, and then get up and do the entire work week again on Monday.
"That's the best part about it," Tsambos said, "You get the best of both worlds ... People that say you can't do it all, you can absolutely do it all. You can still love dancing your whole childhood and still get to dance up until as long as you possibly can and still have the career you always wanted as well."
The 2024 NRL season will be Tsambos' ninth as director of the Knights dance squad - a term the team adopted to replace cheerleaders in 2021 better to represent the breadth of their skill and role. She is a full-time accountant by trade and danced for about as many years in Manly Sea Eagles colours before she came to Newcastle to lead and reinvigorate the local squad.
On Tuesday, the club will host an open audition for dancers to join the elite rank for the season. She will be looking for peak technical experience, fitness, poise, and a kind of tenacity and determination.
"They have to have experience in dance," Tsambos said, "But what it's about is (finding) those dancers that would have that level of experience or have been dancing for some time and then want to be a part of the whole game day experience.
"That's what we really put it out there for - these girls who have been training their whole younger lives ... that have that experience but also want to be a part of the game and then get the opportunity to perform in front of - well, last year we were selling out to 25,000 people."
But for all the training, Tsambos said the payoff was seeing her squad hit that peak performance when everything came together.
"We have been known to whip a routine out on game day," She said, "But they're such a well-oiled machine that they can just do it. We take on a lot of choreography, but they love it, and you would never know as you're watching that we did that routine at 9am that morning.
"They go out there, and they just smash it.
"They know that routine so well that when they are out on that field, they don't even have to think about it ... so that by the time they get to game day, they're out there, and they can just embrace it.
"And you can tell when the team comes off, and they're smiling, and I'm smiling, and they just know; it's a great feeling.
"You get to do it all, and not many people can say they can do that."
