A new partnership between Vashon Center for the Arts and an acclaimed Seattle dance troupe will take flight on Sept. 9, 10 and 12, when Whim W’Him kicks off its 12th season on the stage of the Kay White Hall.

These performances — the first of three planned at VCA in coming months — will include the world premiere of new hybrid dance creations by choreographers Rena Butler and Mark Caserta, alongside a hybrid dance creation, “Nova,” by Alice Clock and Florian Lochner.

The choreographers and teams included in the company’s fall programs came from a global pool of 150 to 200 applicants and were selected by the Whim W’Him dancers and the troupe’s artistic director and founder, Olivier Wevers.

“Professional performers rarely get to curate programming,” said Wevers. “In recognition of this missed opportunity, we created this program in 2015 to give our dancers the power to choose which choreographers would set work on them. We value this unique and mission-centric program that is now a mainstay of our performance season.”

Additional performances of the works will take place on Sept. 18, at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts, and the dance films will debut on Sept. 23, on Whim W’Him’s streaming platform, IN-With-WHIM.

For VCA executive director Allison Halstead Reid, the performances are the fruit of a relationship with Whim W’Him that was seeded earlier in 2021.

“Olivier and I met earlier this year several times to collaborate on bringing Whim W’him to Vashon as an additional location for their season productions,” she said. “In May, after performing with us to a limited capacity house, we sealed the deal to create a partnership for 2021-22.”

The dance troupe is now signed to bring each show in their season repertoire to VCA, starting with this September’s dance concert, then again in January and May — three shows in all.

Halstead Reid said the arts center was also working out details and hope to offer some workshops and special classes for dance students with Whim W’Him.

“With each visit, they may be in residence on Vashon for a few days or a week,” she said. “They love being part of our community!

For more information and tickets to Whim W’Him performances, visit whimwhim.org and vashoncenterforthearts.com.