Sydney Dance Company launches into 2015

Sydney Dance Company launches into the New Year with a powerful double bill – a showcase of deeply personal pieces from two acclaimed choreographic talents: living legend William Forsythe and Sydney Dance Company’s own Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela.

One of the most renowned contemporary dance works of the 20th century, Forsythe’s Quintett was created in 1993 in collaboration with Ballet Frankfurt dancers Dana Caspersen, Stephen Galloway, Jacopo Godani, Thomas McManus and Jone San Martin.

A tour de force for five dancers, Quintett is a deeply personal work, closely guarded, and rarely performed outside of Forsythe’s direct supervision.

Set on a stage filled with bright white light, the piece is a seamless flow of duets, solos and trios set to Gavin Bryar’s Jesus’s Blood Never Failed Me Yet, the movement brilliantly evoking Bryar’s themes of loneliness and the illusion of hope.

Acknowledged as Forsythe’s most poignant masterpiece, Quintett sheds light on a side of Forsythe that audiences don’t often get to experience: the delicate, tender, sublime, lyrical and heart-wrenching. The piece is a moving tribute and glorious celebration of movement, light and life.

Sydney Dance Company is thrilled to have been invited to present the Australian premiere of this incredible production in 2015, as part of its premier season Frame of Mind and alongside a new work by Rafael Bonachela, set to a suite of powerful music by American composer Bryce Dessner – best known as a member of Grammy Award-nominated band The National, performed by The Kronos Quartet.

Inspired by his own recent personal experiences, Bonachela’s piece is an exploration of the ephemeral nature of living. What has appeared robust and dependable reveals itself as fragile and transient, when a single event or occurrence makes everything shift, quickly and forever.

The work sees Bonachela collaborate for the first time with esteemed Australian set designer and outgoing Belvoir artistic director Ralph Myers, and will feature lighting by frequent Sydney Dance Company associate Benjamin Cisterne.

Frame of Mind opens at Sydney Theatre on March 6, ahead of seasons at Canberra Theatre Centre, opening April 30, and Southbank Theatre in Melbourne, opening May 6. For more information, visit www.sydneydancecompany.com.

Photo: Sydney Dance Company dancers Cass Mortimer Eipper and Alana Sargent. Photo by Justin Ridler.