DanceX 2025 Program

Created for the Royal New Zealand Ballet’s 70th anniversary in 2023, Te Ao Mārama is a powerful work by Moss Te Ururangi Patterson. Inspired by haka and executed with precision and strength from the Royal New Zealand Ballet's male dancers, Te Ao Mārama is a striking and lasting addition to the company's repertoire. Te Ao Mārama embraces the strong Māori culture that is celebrated in Aotearoa. It is a privilege to share this history on the international stage for the first time with DanceX.

The Royal New Zealand Ballet’s Te Ao Mārama will be held in the Playhouse in Week 1 of the DanceX program. 

Seeing Through Darkness is an evocative dance work directed by Michelle Ryan, inspired by the raw intensity of Georges Rouault’s expressionist paintings. Rouault’s portrayal of the imperfect body and the troubled soul echoes how people with disability are often perceived — and how they experience the world. This immersive, 17-minute performance weaves together dance, music, lighting and moving image to powerful effect, drawing audiences into a deeply intimate and transformative experience. A poetic metaphor for presence and legacy, it asks: "What do we leave behind?"

Created by Restless Dance Theatre, Australia’s leading dance company working with artists with and without disability, Seeing Through Darkness embodies the beauty of difference. More than a performance, it offers audiences the opportunity to move, reflect, and reimagine human vulnerability and strength through the lens of inclusive contemporary art. 

Restless Dance Theatre’s Seeing Through Darkness will be held in the Playhouse in Week 1 of the DanceX program.  

Content warning: Please be aware that lighting effects are used.

Allegro Brillante is one of George Balanchine’s most joyous, pure dance pieces. Described by the ballerina Maria Tallchief, on whom the bravura leading role was created, as “expansive Russian romanticism”, Allegro Brillante is set to Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 3.
Originally intended as his Sixth Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s composition moves at a vigorous pace, making the steps appear even more difficult, but the ballet relies on strong dancing, precise timing and breadth of gesture.
Balanchine described this ballet as a concentrated essay in the extended classical vocabulary, in which a maximum amount of choreographic development is contained within a rather restricted area of time and space.

The Australian Ballet and The Australian Ballet School’s performance of George Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante will be held in the Playhouse in Week 1 of the DanceX program. 

A dance that explores the ephemeral lightness of ballet together with its strong grounded underpinnings. Four dancers exist between the pull of gravity and the effort to escape it in a celebration of the yielding and resistance that must find balance within us all.

The Australian Ballet’s performance of Lucy Guerin’s Ground Control will be held in the Playhouse Theatre in Week 1 of the DanceX program.

Physical exuberance, sonic resonance, and collective exhilaration explode onto stage in a kaleidoscopic fusion of dance, music and visual art. Speaking to our sensorial nature, Wayfinder reminds us of a state of being that transcends the words that have come to define us. Navigating bigger and more ancient reference points, Wayfinder recognises connection as the central axis of the universe. A summoning of collective awe and wonder, Wayfinder is a tonic for the times. By the stars, the waves, and the sun, we find our way.   

Dancenorth Australia's performance of Wayfinder will be held in the Playhouse Theatre in Week 1 of the DanceX program. 

Content warning: Wayfinder (Excerpts) contains strobe lighting, theatrical haze and loud / startling noise.

Bending innuendo and oozing feminine resilience atop 8-inch heels, Wet Hard Long exhibits the enduring femme body under scrutiny of a patriarchal society. 

Edging the audience towards the promise of relief, two dancers undertake exacting physical feats. Their bodies contend with obstacles, objects and elements – each, more impossible than the last. Extended from Large’s 2022 Keir Choreographic Award- winning work (Wet Hard), Wet Hard Long is an epic display of grit, glamour, and glistening jaw-clenching stamina. A slippery endurance piece demanding perseverance from performers and viewers in a tribute to the strenuous expectations which femme bodies continue to overcome. 

Subverting narratives around sex and power, performing perfection, and avoiding failure, Wet Hard Long provokes questions about identity, desire, ownership, consent and the holy and arduous qualities of the feminine. 

Wet Hard Long will be held in the Fairfax Studio in Week 1 of the DanceX program. 

Duration 53 minutes
Content Warning Contains strobing, abrupt black outs, haze and loud sounds.

Flesh Vessel, choreographed by Jayden Lewis Wall and Melissa Pham, is a rigorously crafted investigation of embodiment and relational presence. Through precise physical negotiation and sustained mutual attention, the work foregrounds the body as a dynamic site of communication where performers Jayden, Melissa & Nikki arrive in articulation. Flesh Vessel generates states of both tranquillity and focus for audiences in a concentrated atmosphere, inviting close attention to the physical expression, kinetic calculation and details at play.

Flesh Vessel will be held in the Fairfax Studio in Week 1 of the DanceX program. 

Content warning: Flesh Vessel contains partial nudity and contains flashing lights.

Choreographer's Note:  

When creating new dance works I’m conscious of the regurgitation of past choreographic ideas. I’m sometimes afraid that I’m repeating myself or cannibalising my own work. But the fact is that no idea - in art, technology or ideology - is born in a vacuum. We are all a product of our influences and experiences. Ideas are also part of a life cycle - they are born, they thrive, they degrade and deteriorate and become the fertiliser for the next batch of ideas.  

Our modern world is obsessed with newness and consumption, but this work is an ode to re-using, repurposing, re-invigorating. In Auto Cannibal we embrace the palimpsests of previous choreographies and see them grow and evolve through the bodies of new dancers.   

Stephanie Lake Company would like to especially thank ALPHA60 for generously gifting the beautiful costume pieces worn by our dancers in Auto Cannibal. 

Stephanie Lake Company's Auto Cannibal will be performed in the Playhouse Theatre in Week 2 of the DanceX program. 

Duration 25 minutes

 Commissioned by West Australian Ballet for their 2024 Ballet at the Quarry season, Extension to Boom draws inspiration from its music, Two Pianos by Bryce Dessner.   

This ballet interprets the rolling booms and dynamic landscapes embedded in the music. The dreamlike expanse between the booms transforms into a playground where the dancers craft metaphorical question marks with their bodies. While inherently abstract, Extension to Boom narrates a collective journey, punctuated by moments akin to the eureka sensation. Dancers push beyond perceived limits, contorting into the unknown.

West Australian Ballet's Extension to Boom will be performed in the Playhouse Theatre in Week 2 of the DanceX program. 

Content Warning: This performance includes loud music and flashing lights

The Delivery is an Aussie-noir graphic-fiction mystery ballet. Set to the gorgeous compositions of Jonny Greenwood, The Delivery tells the story of a young woman seduced by adventure, a briefcase full of promise and a swoon-worthy partner in crime.

Yuldea awakens the earth and sky worlds to tell the story of the Aṉangu people of the Great Victorian Desert. Frances Rings’ first work as Artistic Director explores the moment traditional life collided with the industrial ambition of a growing nation. In 1917, the two halves of the Transcontinental Railway met at the precious water soak on the edge of the Nullarbor, Yuldi Kapi. Yuldea features original music by Leon Rodgers with featured songs by multi-award-winning duo Electric Fields. Designers Elizabeth Gadsby (Set), Jennifer Irwin (Costume), and Karen Norris (Lighting) create a desert world on stage.  

Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Yuldea (excerpt) will be performed in the Playhouse Theatre in Week 2 of the DanceX program.

Content warnings: Please be advised that this performance contains strobe lighting, haze, smoke effects and elevated sound levels. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this production contains voices of recently deceased persons. Bangarra Dance Theatre has been given permission for the use of this recording.

Choreographed by industry leader, Larrakia man, Gary Lang, this international, cross-cultural collaboration with Northumbria University (UK) communicates a story of the Stolen Generations. With care and compassion, it poses questions about relationships between country of origin, identity, adoption, the criminal justice system and psychological health.  

 The Other Side of Me translates into dance the true-life story of a young Aboriginal man, born in the 1960s in the Northern Territory, adopted by a white English family and raised in a remote hamlet in the English countryside. Drawing on a collection of personal letters and poems, it offers insights into the mind of a man struggling with his belonging from the other side of the world.  The Other side of Me is a powerful healing work that takes its audiences on a profound journey. 

Gary Lang NT Dance Company’s The Other Side of Me will be performed in the Fairfax Studio in Week 2 of the DanceX program. 

Content warning: The Other Side of Me contains references to the stolen generation and includes coarse language and water-based haze. No alcohol permitted inside the theatre during the performance. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander audiences are advised that this show references people who have died.

Dreaming beyond the limits of our bodies, young audiences are transported into an absurd and uncanny universe of magic, adventure and transformation. The journey begins in an immersive swamp-like world, murky and unpredictable – like a bizarre dream. In a collision of sound, colour, texture and movement, two dancers shape-shift, cast spells, time travel and defy gravity, transporting young people to a place where they can imagine their own bodies as a site of fantasy. 

Melanie Lane's Dream Swamp will be performed in The Show Room in Week 2 of the DanceX program.

Duration 35 minutes
Warnings Low light, haze, loud sounds, low pressure audience engagement
Age range 4 – 10 years

Dream Swamp was originally commissioned by Melbourne Fringe and received Cash to Create through the Fringe Fund, with thanks to the Pulse Giving Circle.