{"id":921589,"date":"2026-10-09T07:54:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T07:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/921589\/"},"modified":"2026-10-09T07:54:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T07:54:21","slug":"sydney-festival-2027-11-international-dance-works-to-headline-once-in-a-lifetime-program-sydney-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/921589\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney festival 2027: 11 international dance works to headline \u2018once-in-a-lifetime\u2019 program | Sydney festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

A \u201conce-in-a-lifetime\u201d program of dance works of scale will be coming to Sydney<\/a> in January, including 11 international works from France, Belgium, South Africa and beyond making their Australian premiere.<\/p>\n

The program, which triples the scale of the dance offering at the last Sydney festival<\/a>, will bring 174 performers and crew to Sydney, with the crowning jewel being the acclaimed French choreographer Rachid Ouramdane\u2019s Outsider. The 2024 work features 21 dancers from the Ballet du Grand Th\u00e9\u00e2tre de Gen\u00e8ve and four elite athletes, navigating a \u201ccat\u2019s cradle\u201d of high wires and slack lines, to the mesmerising, minimalist music of the avant garde composer Julius Eastman.<\/p>\n

Outsider will be performed in a purpose-built 720-seat theatre in the recently renovated Cutaway at Barangaroo \u2013 the first time the space has been activated for theatrical performance. The venue will also host Christos Papadopoulos\u2019s My Fierce Ignorant Step; a double bill of works by the Chinese choreographer Tao Ye with his company TAO Dance<\/a> Theatre; and a new work by genre-defying collective (La)Horde, best known for their work with pop stars such as Madonna, Sam Smith and Rosal\u00eda.<\/p>\n

Rambert in Hop(e)storm by (La)Horde, who will be bringing a new work to Sydney. Photograph: Hugo Glendinning<\/p>\n

Under the banner of the Sydney festival, which announces its full program on 19 October, this is the first southern hemisphere outing for Dance Reflections, an international festival funded by French jewellery maison Van Cleef and Arpels, which has previously been staged in cities such as London, New York, Hong Kong and Seoul.<\/p>\n

\u201cDance Reflections has been a real gamechanger in the creation and dissemination of dance on this scale,\u201d says the Sydney festival director, Kris Nelson, who witnessed first-hand the impact the inaugural festival had in London, where he was working at the time.<\/p>\n

In Sydney, he says, it will be a \u201conce-in-a-lifetime\u201d opportunity for dance lovers, including the Australian debuts of Ouramdane, (La)Horde<\/a> and the rising star Le\u00efla Ka, who has choreographed for Beyonc\u00e9. The Belgian master Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker will return to Australia with her company Rosas, and, from Australia, there\u2019s a brand new work from Indigenous and intercultural dance company Marrugeku.<\/p>\n

Marrugeku\u2019s artistic directors Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain. The Indigenous and intercultural dance company will be premiering a new work at Dance Reflections. Photograph: Philip Thompson<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been more than a decade since Sydney\u2019s last major dance festival, Spring Dance. Launched by the Sydney Opera House in 2009, it ran for four years and featured superstars such as Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, before being dropped in 2013 for financial reasons. At the time, the Sydney Opera House CEO Louise Herron described the city\u2019s dance audience as \u201crelatively small but passionate\u201d.<\/p>\n

Nelson is hoping that\u2019s changed. \u201cI\u2019m not daunted,\u201d he says, pointing to the viral popularity of dance on TikTok, and the pop cultural work of choreographers such as (La)Horde and Le\u00efla Ka, who draw from queer club culture and street dance.<\/p>\n

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The festival is offering 10,000 A-Reserve tickets across the program at $49, and two works will be free: Trisha Brown\u2019s seminal Roof Piece, in the gallery spaces of the Art Gallery of NSW; and the Belgian choreographer Cassiel Gaube\u2019s tribute to house music, Soir\u00e9e d\u2019\u00e9tudes, in the public space at Carriageworks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really excited because we\u2019re presenting a massive sampler of different kinds of dance, from the super classical to the acrobatic, to clubby and queer, personality-driven dance with big characters on stage, and works where you\u2019re watching these incredible bodies do amazing geometry,\u201d Nelson says. \u201cThis is your chance to test it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sydney Festival\u2019s full program will be announced on Monday 19 October. Tickets are on sale here<\/a> from Thursday 22 October<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A \u201conce-in-a-lifetime\u201d program of dance works of scale will be coming to Sydney in January, including 11 international…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":921590,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":["post-921589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=921589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/921590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}