Sydney festival 2027 will host 11 international dance works making their Australian premieres, from France, Belgium, South Africa and beyond. The program is the first southern hemisphere outing for Dance Reflections, an international festival funded by the French jewellery maison Van Cleef and Arpels, previously staged in London, New York, Hong Kong and Seoul. It triples the scale of the dance offering at the last Sydney festival and brings 174 performers and crew to the city.

Outsider to open in a purpose-built Cutaway theatre

The centerpiece is French choreographer Rachid Ouramdane's Outsider, a 2024 work featuring 21 dancers from the Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève and four elite athletes, performing on high wires and slack lines to music by Julius Eastman.

• •Outsider will be staged in a purpose-built 720-seat theatre in the recently renovated Cutaway at Barangaroo
• •It is the first time the Cutaway has been activated for theatrical performance
• •The Cutaway will also host Christos Papadopoulos's My Fierce Ignorant Step
• •A double bill of works by the Chinese choreographer Tao Ye with TAO Dance Theatre is also programmed there
• •A new work by (La)Horde, who have worked with Madonna, Sam Smith and Rosalía, completes the Cutaway lineup

International choreographers and returning companies

The program includes the Australian debuts of Ouramdane, (La)Horde and Leïla Ka, who has choreographed for Beyoncé. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker will return to Australia with her company Rosas. From Australia, Marrugeku, an Indigenous and intercultural dance company, will present a brand new work.

A dance festival returns to Sydney

Sydney's last major dance festival, Spring Dance, was launched by the Sydney Opera House in 2009 and ran for four years, featuring artists including Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, before being dropped in 2013 for financial reasons. At the time, Sydney Opera House CEO Louise Herron described the city's dance audience as "relatively small but passionate".

Sydney festival director Kris Nelson said Dance Reflections has been "a real gamechanger in the creation and dissemination of dance on this scale". He called the Sydney edition a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity for dance lovers. On audience size, he said: "I'm not daunted", pointing to the viral popularity of dance on TikTok and choreographers drawing from queer club culture and street dance.

Tickets and free works

The festival is offering 10,000 A-Reserve tickets across the program at $49. Two works will be free:

• •Trisha Brown's Roof Piece at the Art Gallery of NSW
• •Cassiel Gaube's Soirée d'études, a tribute to house music, in the public space at Carriageworks

Nelson described the program as a massive sampler of different kinds of dance and urged audiences: "This is your chance to test it out.". The Sydney festival announces its full program on 19 October.