National Tour 2026

Sydney Dance Company is proud to tour Australia annually, bringing unforgettable contemporary dance experiences to audiences across the country.

In 2026, our touring program features the electrifying Sydney Season 1 Engine, a striking triple bill that promises to ignite stages around Australia with raw power, and Spellbound, where three choreographers explore the transcendent experience of ritual, desire and twilight transformation.

New South Wales

Sydney Dance Company’s NSW touring is supported by the Sydney Dance Company Touring Fund and the NSW Government through Create NSW.

Western Australia and Northern Territory

Sydney Dance Company’s interstate touring is supported by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.

Three choreographers. Three powerful worlds. One Spellbound experience that explores the transience between ritual, desire and the twilight hours. Featuring Rafael Bonachela’s new work Spell, Melanie Lane’s acclaimed Love Lock and Tra Mi Dinh’s ode to change and time, Somewhere between ten and fourteen.

Step into Spell; a bold new dance work from celebrated choreographer Rafael Bonachela. Five distinctive worlds, five powerful “spells,” each a vivid ritual that together create dance alchemy.

With intricate rhythmic detail and fearless technicality, Bonachela’s signature style reaches new heights of precision and passion.

Set to music from Ólafur Arnalds, Bryce Dessner, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Alice Smith, with costume and set design by Kelsey Lee and lighting design by Damien Cooper, the Spell creatives conjure an exhilarating fusion of movement, light, and sound for the dancers to inhabit.

Spell is an invitation to experience dance as a potent, primal force.

“Bonachela at his best: tightly built, dramatically open-ended, and danced with complete conviction.” – Dance Australia (Continuum 2025)

Choreography: Rafael Bonachela
Music: Ólafur Arnalds, Bryce Dessner, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and Alice Smith.
Lighting Design: Damien Cooper
Costume & Set Design: Kelsey Lee

Rafael Bonachela’s Spell is proudly supported by Visionary Patron, the Clegg Foundation and Commissioning Partners, Orsolina28 Art Foundation.

Melanie Lane’s Love Lock returns to the stage, a vivid, futuristic folk dance that collides romance, ritual and imagination. Drawing on collective traditions and the emotional charge of love songs, Lane celebrates the binding ability of dance to move, warn and empower.

With striking costumes by celebrated designer Akira Isogawa and a pulsating score by UK electronic artist Clark, Love Lock summons a charged, otherworldly energy. Part celebration, part warning and wholly alive.

★★★★★ “Lane has an uncanny ability to stretch your space-time perceptions and make live dance feel like a gorgeously filmed, addictive music video.” – Sydney Morning Herald (Twofold 2024)

★★★★★ “…choreographed with electric intelligence by Melanie Lane.” – Sydney Morning Herald (Twofold 2024)

“…Love Lock feels exceedingly contemporary. In fact, it feels like a glimpse into the future. You just can’t look away.” – ArtsHub (Twofold 2024)

Choreography: Melanie Lane
Composer: Clark
Lighting and Set Design: Damien Cooper
Costume Design: Akira Isogawa

Love Lock was originally supported as part of Sydney Dance Company’s Twofold season, by Visionary Patron, the Clegg Foundation.

Somewhere between ten and fourteen is a study on dusk – illuminating and indulging in the transient yet expansive moments between day and night. Bodies and energy chase the impermanence of transformation and surrender to the ever-shifting movements of light, and time. It is a choreography propelled by the movement of light. It is an ode to change. Originally premiering in New Breed 2023, this mesmerising work now takes to the mainstage, reimagined for a larger ensemble.

“The integration of sound, movement, light and colour is so complete it’s mesmerising.” – Dance Australia (Continuum 2025)

“Dinh… a choreographer deeply attuned to both visual poetry and kinetic logic.” – Dance Informa Magazine (Continuum 2025)

“The ensemble work is extraordinary. Dinh has a sculptor’s eye for spatial balance: dancers form clusters, ripples, and waves that move across the stage like breathing organisms.”  – Dance Informa Magazine  (Continuum 2025)

Choreography: Tra Mi Dinh
Music: Tilman Robinson
Lighting Design: Alexander Berlage
Costume Design: Aleisa Jelbart

Originally produced by Sydney Dance Company as part of New Breed 2023, co-presented with Carriageworks and proudly supported by Principal Partner, The Balnaves Foundation.

Engine is a striking triple bill that unites three extraordinary choreographers; Rafael Bonachela (The Journey Itself Is Home), Melanie Lane (Love Lock) and Fran Diaz (The Mass Ornament), for an exhilarating performance that promises to ignite stages around Australia with the raw power of bold, fearless dance.

Engine is supported by our Season and Tour presenting partner The Art House, Wyong.

The Journey Itself Is Home is a new work set to music by Grammy Award–winning composer Bryce Dessner and inspired by the writing of 17th-century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō.

Taking its title from Bashō’s reflection, “Each day is a journey, and the journey itself is home,” the work embraces a philosophy where travel becomes a state of being. Bonachela transforms this idea into a choreographic meditation on movement and presence, where meaning is found not in arrival, but in the act of continual becoming – each step a destination in itself.

Choreography: Rafael Bonachela
Composer: Bryce Dessner
Lighting Design: Damien Cooper
Set & Costume Design: Kelsey Lee

Commissioning Partner of The Journey Itself Is Home, Orsolina28 Art Foundation.

Generously supported by the Carla Zampatti Comissioning Fund including leadership support from the foundation and donors to the fund.

Melanie Lane’s Love Lock returns to the stage, a vivid, futuristic folk dance that collides romance, ritual and imagination. Drawing on collective traditions and the emotional charge of love songs, Lane celebrates the binding ability of dance to move, warn and empower.

With striking costumes by celebrated designer Akira Isogawa and a pulsating score by UK electronic artist Clark, Love Lock summons a charged, otherworldly energy. Part celebration, part warning and wholly alive.

★★★★★ “Lane has an uncanny ability to stretch your space-time perceptions and make live dance feel like a gorgeously filmed, addictive music video.” – Sydney Morning Herald (Twofold 2024)

★★★★★ “…choreographed with electric intelligence by Melanie Lane.” – Sydney Morning Herald (Twofold 2024)

“…Love Lock feels exceedingly contemporary. In fact, it feels like a glimpse into the future. You just can’t look away.” – ArtsHub (Twofold 2024)

Choreography: Melanie Lane
Composer: Clark
Lighting and Set Design: Damien Cooper
Costume Design: Akira Isogawa

Love Lock was originally supported as part of Sydney Dance Company’s Twofold season, by Visionary Patron, the Clegg Foundation.

The Mass Ornament by Berlin-based Spanish choreographer Fran Diaz makes its Australian premiere with this hypnotic work being set to the music of Henryk Górecki.

Reimagining Siegfried Kracauer’s 1927 essay, Diaz transforms the idea of mass movement into a choreographic exploration of unity and presence. Instead of dancers disappearing into a mechanical whole, the work reveals a system built on connection, where precision depends on awareness, and individuality and collectivity exist in constant dialogue.

Choreography, Set Design & Costumes: Fran Díaz
Choreographic Assistant: Keren Leiman
Music: Henryk Górecki
Additional Composition / Sound Design: Tom Foskett-Barnes
Set Design Advisor: Manuel Cornelius
Costume Assistant: Janine Schwind
Light Design: Tanja Rühl

Fran Diaz’s The Mass Ornament is generously supported by Sydney Dance Company’s Visionary Patron, the Clegg Foundation. The Mass Ornament was commissioned by Hessisches Staatsballet and performed in Australia with its kind permission.