Van Cleef & Arpels' dance festival comes to Sydney in January, with a high-wire ballet
From 7 to 25 January 2027, Dance Reflections, the dance programme of the jeweller Van Cleef & Arpels, runs inside Sydney Festival. It's Dance Reflections' first time in the Southern Hemisphere.
Van Cleef & Arpels founded Dance Reflections in 2020 to help choreographers and institutions share existing repertoire and make new work. It now has more than 70 partners in 17 countries, and runs residencies for professional dancers alongside its festivals.
So where's the circus? In Outsider. It's by Rachid Ouramdane, the choreographer who runs Chaillot, the Théâtre national de la Danse in Paris.
Twenty dancers from the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève share a web of tightropes and cables with four extreme sports athletes. Outsider plays at The Cutaway in Barangaroo from 12 to 14 January, with tickets from A$49 to A$129.90 plus a booking fee.
At the Geneva premiere in 2024, the four athletes were highliners, Nathan Paulin among them. Sydney Festival hasn't named its four.
Ouramdane brings a second piece, Contre-nature, to the Sydney Opera House. (LA)HORDE, Leïla Ka and Robyn Orlin are on the programme too, and Australian company Marrugeku premieres Ngurragabu. It's about a future shaped by environmental damage and Indigenous knowledge.
Two of the events are free: Trisha Brown Dance Company's Roof Piece at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and Cassiel Gaube's Soirée d'études at Carriageworks.
Concretely, if you work in movement and you're in Sydney that month, look at the workshops. The festival lists more than a dozen, led by the visiting choreographers at the Sydney Dance Theatre, plus talks before and after the shows. Dates and booking aren't out yet.
