2024 National Tour

In 2024, we’re performing for audiences around Australia.

Our 2024 National Tour features our triple-bill Ascent along with Rafael Bonachela’s new work momenta and our latest double bill Twofold that features the return of Bonachela’s beloved Impermanence and Love Lock, a new work by Melanie Lane. Love Lock is generously supported by Sydney Dance Company’s Visionary Patron Brett Clegg and the Clegg Foundation.

See below if we’re coming to a location near you!

2024 National Tour Locations

Rafael Bonachela’s I Am-ness calls for the convergence of the moving body and creative mind, charting a world in flux where simplicity dominates, and expectations are subverted.

In this world premiere, Bonachela revisits the powerful and emotive work of the Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks, previously celebrated in the critically acclaimed ab [intra].

Vasks’ Lonely Angel sets a resolute yet hushed melancholy on strings, creating an ode to our shared sense of being, and canvassing the nature of existence with euphoric tenderness. I Am-ness is an exacting search for the stuff of life.

Choreographer: Rafael Bonachela
Music: “Lonely angel”, meditation for violin and strings by Pēteris Vasks
Lighting Designer: Damien Cooper
Costume Designer: Rafael Bonachela

Fiction is our new reality, and we devour it frenetically. Old structures are rupturing and the void is being filled by billions of personal stories. This piece poses many questions: the body’s meaning and its capacity to transform; the relationship with technology, and the connection with nature.

The Shell, A Ghost, The Host & The Lyrebird is the journey of some bodies towards the unknown, as mutant creatures in an oneiric valley. A place where the dancers abandon binarisms and old forms to embrace a transition process from what we were and are to what we will be. Bodies are penetrated by a constantly transforming place, decentralising the human, shifting our focus to still have a chance to survive. Hybridising bodies, containers of information, like shells, adapting to life in continuous transition; as lyrebirds, learning from the natural and the artificial world to survive; as hosts of a finite world, in an attempt to decode the old and understand where those ghosts will go or if we will succumb as well.

Choreographer: Marina Mascarell
Composer: Nick Wales
Costume & Set Designers: Lauren Brincat and Leah Giblin
Lighting Designer: Damien Cooper

Forever & Ever

Antony Hamilton’s Forever & Ever  “lays siege to the senses with a mighty display of shock and awe.” (The Australian). Set to a sonically stimulating score by ‘The Presets’ Julian Hamilton, Forever & Ever fuses together a killer mix of dance, techno, high fashion and vivid lighting to hypnotic effect. Exploring ideas of order, chaos, popular culture and human behaviour, this boundary-pushing work is a bold and thrilling theatrical experience.

Choreographer: Antony Hamilton
Composer: Julian Hamilton
Costume Design: Paula Levis
Lighting Designer: Ben Cisterne

momenta is a journey into the poetry and physics of human connection by celebrated choreographer Rafael Bonachela. This mesmerising piece presents a kaleidoscope of energies, capturing the essence of fleeting moments suspended between past and future, where individual trajectories collide and intertwine.  

momenta brims with Bonachela’s distinct style, rich with rhythmical and spatial patterning and endlessly inventive partnering. The dancers of Sydney Dance Company transcend physical limitations; exploring the full range of their bodies with grace, power and vulnerability. Each moment resonates through the space, drawing the audience into a world where raw expression meets refined technique.  

Through the captivating interplay of Bonachela’s signature choreographic style, Wales’ evocative soundscapes and Gadsby and Cooper’s striking designs, momenta gathers the hurtling vectors of our lives into confluence and connection. For audiences and dancers alike, it is an invitation to rejoice in the beauty and fragility of our shared humanity. 

Choreography: Rafael Bonachela
Music: Original Score by Nick Wales featuring “Distant Light” by Pēteris Vasks
Lighting Design: Damien Cooper
Set and Costume Design: Elizabeth Gadsby
Associate Designer: Emma White

Impermanence 

A visceral and thrilling exploration of the juxtaposition of beauty and devastation, Rafael Bonachela’s critically acclaimed Impermanence features an evocative score by Grammy Award-winning Bryce Dessner performed live on stage. 

LOVE LOCK

What does the future of Folk Dance look like? A dance that absorbs the complex fabric of our diverse cultures, of an accelerating world, of disappearing lands. Choreographed by renowned artist Melanie Lane, LOVE LOCK is a re-imagined folk dance that draws upon these collective experiences, and that celebrates the binding act of dance to move, warn and empower us. 

Impermanence

A visceral and thrilling exploration of the juxtaposition of beauty and devastation, this full-length work features a new score full of emotional power from Grammy Award-winning composer Bryce Dessner.

Best known as a founder of American rock band The National and for his film scores for The Revenant and The Two Popes, Dessner was initially inspired by the tragedy of the Australian bush fires and the Notre-Dame fire in Paris. Sydney Dance Company’s “awe-inspiring” (In Daily) ensemble delivers an epic, driven performance that packs an emotional punch.

Choreographer: Rafael Bonachela
Composer: Bryce Dessner
Music Features: Another World by Anohni
Lighting Designer: Damien Cooper
Stage Designer: David Fleischer
Costume Designer: Aleisa Jelbart

The Sydney and Australian national performances of Impermanence are presented in association with the Australian String Quartet. Bryce Dessner’s music composition Impermanence is commissioned by the Australian String Quartet and Sydney Dance Company. This commission has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

momenta

★★★★ “momenta is an electric and arresting celebration of light and life that feels almost sacred in its reverence for the power of the body to connect and communicate.” – Sydney Morning Herald

“This extraordinary work bypasses logic, connecting with the subconscious through beautiful intensity and visual poetry.” – Dance Informa

“Like much good art, momenta gets inside you and intensifies your sensuality.” – The Saturday Paper

“The dancers’ muscular control and agility shine through rhythmic patterning, explorative partnering, and motifs incorporating wavelets, extensions, and elevations, which then give in to gravity.” – Dance Informa

“Bonachela has once again delivered outstanding contemporary dance. In momenta, we have a choreographic work that pushes boundaries, delivered by a company brimming with talent.” – Fjord Review

Ascent

“Bold, emotive and visceral, Ascent is a must-see for lovers of dance.” – Arts Hub

“Ascent is a sumptuous combination of choreography, music, movement, and light. Joyous and engaging, Bonachela has brought together three diverging contemporary pieces that showcase the immense depth of talent at Sydney Dance Company. A must see.” – Fjord Review

“an evening of challenging, perfectly executed and deeply satisfying contemporary dance” – Australian Arts Review

★★★★ “poignant choreography… a must-watch for the curious.” – Sydney Morning Herald

“Make no mistake, this is a serious contemporary dance company with highly trained, versatile dancers that deserves a place on the world stage. Do not miss the chance to see this accomplished company that will no doubt take the world by storm.” – The Wonderful World of Dance

“Ascent is a well-balanced triple bill from Sydney Dance Company showcasing the Company’s physical strength, fine technique, creative ability and continued relevance in such a youthful ensemble.” – Dance Life

Impermanence

★★★★ “Dance moves for the end of the world… Choreographer Rafael Bonachela sets his excellent dancers on a whirling, bounding trajectory that sustains them in duets, trios and interestingly constructed ensembles…” The Sydney Morning Herald

“…it is arguably the single best piece created by and for an Australian dance company for many years” Adelaide Advertiser

★★★★ 1/2 “A hypnotically beautiful work, stunningly performed by the Company’s 17 dancers to music that is visceral and moving” Limelight

★★★★★ “The music alone is worth hearing live in concert and Bonachela’s choreography adds a whole other dimension to these collaborative contemplations of humanity for our times.” ClassikON

“Extraordinary… Form and function meet seamlessly in every aspect — Bonachela’s huge, fast, juicy movement, Damien Cooper’s luscious lighting, David Fleischer’s imposing stage design and Aleisa Jelbart’s nature-­inspired costumes, all in the tight embrace of Dessner’s score.” The Australian

“A tear-jerker without being baroque, with a finger on the vein of our collective anxieties and dislocations, Impermanence is a triumph of collaboration and passion.”  The Arts Hub

“Moving and powerful, at-once capturing transience and fragility then strength and passion.”  Timeout

“Awareness of the impermanence of everything makes me feel that we must use every moment – that every moment counts – and that the transitory nature of life inspires a need for energy, urgency and radiance.” Rafael Bonachela

“The dancers, wow. They are incredible, so talented. I love the physicality of them, and Rafael’s work really suits my music. The new piece is very much for them – definitely the musical language is inspired by the company itself even to the point that I was seeing those dancers in my mind as I composed… a stunning, inexplicable alchemy happens with the melding of movement and sound. A third art form is born.” Bryce Dessner, The Australian

“There’s a certain sense of beauty about bringing something back, but also there’s this sense of regrowth and rebuilding on the experiences and perspectives of what we have all been through as people and as artists ourselves.” Liam Green, Company dancer

“Impermanence was pure magic – fleeting – a moment in time of delicacy, softness, stillness and breath” Alyssa Hanley, audience member. 

“We have been twice now. So good!” Selina Baxby, audience member. 

“Unbelievable performance! We loved every minute – such superb choreography and amazingly talented dancers.” Melanie Jane, audience member. 

“We have a world top dance company in our very own city. We feel nourished by your art and it breathes sunshine and joy into our life. We so appreciate your generosity in a very personal way. We don’t quite get that feeling from any other dance companies.” Michael P., Subscriber