Sydney Festival will bring a substantial international dance program to the city from 7–25 January 2027, pairing works by choreographers including (LA)HORDE, Rachid Ouramdane, Tao Ye and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker with a world premiere from Marrugeku and the return of its $49 ticket program.
Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is a centrepiece of the newly announced festival, bringing ballet, house dance, contemporary choreography and works shaped by club culture into theatres, galleries and public spaces. The redeveloped Cutaway at Barangaroo will host festival performances for the first time, becoming a major setting for dance throughout January.
Alongside the programming announcement, the festival has confirmed that more than 10,000 A-reserve seats will be offered at $49 across every show and every performance in the ticketed program. The allocation spans the whole festival, including dance, giving audiences scope to see several works or try an unfamiliar artist at a lower cost.
“With terrific seats available for $49 at every performance of every ticketed show, we’re giving audiences more freedom to take a chance on an unfamiliar artist, try a different artform or bring a friend,” festival director Kris Nelson said.
The breadth of the dance program makes that invitation particularly relevant. Audiences will be able to encounter markedly different approaches to choreography within the same festival, from the geometric precision of TAO Dance Theater to Trisha Brown’s experiments with distance and perspective, and Marrugeku’s exploration of future relationships between people and Country.
French choreographer Rachid Ouramdane will present two Australian-exclusive works. At The Cutaway, Outsider brings together 20 dancers from Switzerland’s Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève and four extreme sports athletes on a network of tightropes. Set to music by the late Julius Eastman, the work explores collective movement, risk and trust, extending ballet into a setting where balance has immediate physical consequences.
Ouramdane’s Contre-nature, at the Sydney Opera House, approaches related questions through ten performers from Compagnie de Chaillot. Moving through mist, the ensemble uses lifts, catches and falls to examine dependence and the responsibility of holding another person.
Marrugeku’s Ngurragabu will have its world premiere at Carriageworks, placing a major new Australian work within both Dance Reflections and the festival’s First Nations-led Blak Out program.
Created by choreographer Dalisa Pigram and director Rachael Swain in dialogue with Yawuru and Bardi custodians, Ngurragabu imagines a future of great middens and drowned Country. The performance unfolds within visual artist Abdul-Rahman Abdullah’s petrified mangrove forest, with immersive projections and techno-futurist music.
Its Indigenous and settler-diasporic performers come from Australia, South-East Asia and Melanesia. Together, they consider how people might live differently with one another and the planet.
China’s TAO Dance Theater will present 15 | 18, bringing the two works from Tao Ye’s Numerical Series together for the first time in the Southern Hemisphere. Shifting geometric patterns and movement informed by the precision of Chinese calligraphy underpin the double bill.
Collective movement also drives Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos’ My Fierce Ignorant Step. Built from walking, breathing and small gestures, the work brings ten dancers into an increasingly urgent shared rhythm, drawing on the intensity and possibility of adolescence.
French collective (LA)HORDE, the artistic directors of Ballet national de Marseille, will make their first Australian appearance with CROSSOVER, a new show for Sydney Festival. Their practice crosses dance, film, fashion and music, with collaborations spanning artists including Madonna, Sam Smith and Spike Jonze.
At Carriageworks, Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Moroccan choreographer Radouan Mriziga will present Il Cimento dell’Armonia e dell’Inventione with Rosas and A7LA5. Four dancers embody the seasons and their disruption in a response to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons that places the familiar score in the context of climate change.
Questions of identity, conformity and resistance run through several other works. In Leïla Ka’s Maldonne, five dancers work with 40 second-hand dresses, exploring the strength, vulnerability and experiences carried by women’s clothing.
Portuguese choreographer Marco da Silva Ferreira’s Fcking Future*, co-presented by Powerhouse Parramatta, brings eight performers into a confrontation between club culture and military drill. The work examines masculinity and conformity through sustained physical intensity and queer expression.
At the Sydney Opera House, South African choreographer Robyn Orlin’s We Wear Our Wheels with Pride… draws on the history of Durban’s Zulu rickshaw pullers. Performers from Moving Into Dance Mophatong combine traditional movement with hip-hop, electronic music, spoken word and Afro-fusion, exploring how labour became an expression of style, dignity and resistance.
Free performances are a significant part of the dance offering. Trisha Brown Dance Company will present Roof Piece at the Art Gallery of NSW, adapting the work first performed across ten blocks of lower Manhattan in 1971. Dancers positioned within sight of one another will make the gallery’s architecture part of the choreography, with each audience member seeing only a portion of the whole.
Cassiel Gaube’s Soirée d’études will be presented free at Carriageworks in an Australian-exclusive season. Three dancers explore house dance on a white square, initially moving to a beat the audience cannot hear. Their footwork supplies the rhythm before music enters the space.
Beyond Dance Reflections, Legs On The Wall’s Waverider will make its Sydney Festival debut at Bondi Pavilion following its postponement in 2026. Created by Joshua Thomson, the free work combines surf culture and acrobatics on a giant inflatable wave, which becomes a play space after the performance.
The festival’s participatory program also includes artist-led workshops and talks through Summer School, while The Cutaway will host a free opening-weekend dance party on 8 January. Nearby, The Yard will provide a free outdoor festival hub at Barangaroo Reserve from 8–24 January.
Sydney Festival runs from 7–25 January 2027. Tickets go on sale Thursday 22 October, with limited $49 A-reserve allocations available across all ticketed shows and performances. Full program and booking information is available through Sydney Festival.