From Australia, the United Kingdom and Italy, here are the highlights of the 2026 Sydney Festival dance program.
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Artists in this year’s Sydney Festival imagine exit strategies from a climate change doom loop – and dream of taking root in its post-apocalyptic rubble.
The Sydney Festival boycott was a vibrant example of engaged citizens taking foreign policy into their own hands.
This new Australian play, adapted from Heather Rose’s award winning book, celebrates the power of performance to help us connect.
This new dance work from Chunky Move is mesmerising and wondrously odd.
Artists are some of the poorest people in our community, and yet are prepared to forgo their limited income to support fellow artists from other countries – in this case Palestine.
A celebration of life, love and resilience, The Rise and Fall of Saint George is a restorative experience.
Yaron Lifschitz’s spellbinding physical drama has just the right amount of play, death-defying tricks and whimsical imagery.
Evonne Goolagong Cawley’s biography is an intimate and personal play, tempered with humour and love.
Force Majeure’s The Last Season, directed by Danielle Micich, forges a stimulating but disjointed narrative.
Playwright Jane Harrison’s The Visitors shows audiences how a group of Indigenous leaders might have debated what to do when the First Fleet landed in 1788 - but where are the women?
Jimmy Chi’s 1990 musical is given its first major stage revival – and leaves the audience singing along.
The world premiere of Nardi Simpson’s Black Drop Effect takes in the complex histories of Aboriginal responses to commemoration, and makes space for protest, cultural reclamation and negotiation.
This new play will feel familiar to those of us who grew up in Lebanese Australian families.
I saw the performance the first day the smoke was clearing. We need connection to find a way forward; I found it in the theatre.
Australia’s three major summer festivals in Sydney, Perth and Adelaide give an interesting insight into how festival programming is changing – or not.
One Infinity is a music and dance collaboration about crossing cultures and breaking boundaries. The performance celebrates differences without attempting to resolve them.
Debates about the place of the monologue in theatre fall away when you have a show as compassionate and funny as The Weekend.
Deer Woman, written, directed, designed, composed, stage managed and performed by First Nations artists from Canada, is anchored by a solo performance of fierce skill, focus and precision.
Dancenorth’s Dust explores a world on the brink of turning back to dust. Its themes are familiar in contemporary dance, but the show is replete with powerful images.
Top contributors
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Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance, UNSW
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Honorary Associate, Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, School of Literature, Art, and Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney
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Associate Professor in Media, University of Technology Sydney
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Senior Lecturer/Chair of Department of Performance Studies, University of Sydney
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Senior Lecturer in English Literature, University of Notre Dame Australia
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Associate Professor, Theatre and Performance, UNSW
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Associate Professor in Performance Studies, University of Sydney
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Professor, Critical Indigenous Studies and Director of The Centre for Global Indigenous Futures, Macquarie University
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Dean, University of Notre Dame Australia
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Lecturer, UNSW
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Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sydney
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Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies, UNSW
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Assistant Professor, Nanyang Technological University
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Professor, The University of Melbourne
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Professor, School of Humanities and Communication Arts & Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University