Introduction

Australia's leading contemporary dance company, Sydney Dance Company, brings two works by top choreographers to Helsinki Festival.

After a sell-out Sydney world-premiere season in 2022, Rafael Bonachela’s Impermanence is “arguably the single best piece created by and for an Australian dance company for many years” (Adelaide Advertiser). A visceral and thrilling exploration of the juxtaposition of beauty and devastation, this full-length work features a moving score full of emotional power from Grammy Award- winning composer Bryce Dessner.

Best known as a founder of American rock band The National and for his film scores for The Revenant and The Two Popes, Dessner was initially inspired by the tragedy of the Australian bush fires and the Notre-Dame fire in Paris. Sydney Dance Company’s “awe- inspiring” (In Daily) ensemble is joined live on stage by the Australian String Quartet. This is epic, driven performance that packs an emotional punch.

Experience the power of dance and music performed live together, laden with meaning, fleeting and vulnerable, and from devastation find energy, urgency, radiance and hope.

Originally premiering in 2018 and returning for a smash-hit season in 2023, Antony Hamilton’s Helpmann Award-winning Forever & Ever “lays siege to the senses with a mighty display of shock and awe” (The Australian).

Set to a sonically stimulating score by The Presets’ Julian Hamilton, Forever & Ever fuses together a killer mix of dance, techno, high fashion and vivid lighting to hypnotic effect. Exploring ideas of order, chaos, popular culture and human behaviour, this boundary-pushing work is a bold and thrilling theatrical experience that is not to be missed.

Audience discussion Fri 29.8. after the performance.

The event is organized by the Helsinki Festival.