Sydney Dance Company came to Melbourne to announce its 2014 season on Tuesday this week. The company made a detour to the Southbank Theatre to make the launch before heading to Canberra and then overseas for a major international tour. Touring is what SDC will be spending a great deal of time doing next year – to five Australian capital cities as well as overseas.
Artistic director Rafael Bonachela described his program with his usual infectuous enthusiasm. The first major season will be a triple bill called "Interplay", which will include a new work by Gideon Obarzanek (until recently the artistic director of Melbourne’s Chunky Move) and by Bonachela himself. He has also invited Jacopo Godani to restage his Raw Models, which was such a hit when first shown in 2011. That season will open in Sydney on March 15 and then tour to Canberra and Melbourne.
SDC’s second major season, held in October, will introduce the Paris-based Greek choreographer Andonis Foniadakis to Australian audiences. “I came across his work on–line,” Bonachela said. “It’s wild, physical, expansive. I would have loved to have dance it if I could.” Instead he has commissioned him to choreograph a new work. It will share the bill with a new work by Bonachela, under the banner “Louder than Words”.
The company will also tour WA and Qld with Bonachela’s multi-award winning 2 One Another and will present a Brisbane season of Les Illuminations, with singer Katie Noonan, which sold out in Sydney this year. And in November, the company will return to Sydney to present "New Breed", which will present new works by four as yet to chosen emerging choreographers.
But first up, in February, is a collaboration with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra on Richard Strauss’s dramatic opera, Elektra. Eight dancers from the company will join a starry line-up of singers (Christine Goerke, Lisa Gasteen, Cheryl Barker, Peter Coleman-Wright and Kim Begley) and the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. Bonachela has commissioned Melbourne-based Stephanie Lake to create the choreography.
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