Sydney Dance Company ends 2019 with a double bill celebrating its 50th birthday. To celebrate the occasion, Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela commissioned Gideon Obarzanek, a former dancer with the company, to create a new work called Us 50, which brings together the current dancers, SDC alumni and audience members. Bonachela pairs this with his own piece 6 Breaths, which he created for the company in 2010.

Us 50. Photograph © Pedro Greig

The evening begins with a film looking back over the company’s five-decade history, which pays special tribute to Graeme Murphy who ran SDC for 30 years with Janet Vernon. Clips from various productions show the range of work created across the years, encapsulating the theatricality of Murphy’s productions and the transition to Bonachela’s very different style of choreography.

Bonachela’s 6 Breaths is choreographed to mournful, sonorous music by Ezio Bosso for six cellos and a piano. It begins in darkness with a stunning, ethereal video by Tim Richardson on a front scrim in which a flurry of swirling, leaf-like shards gather to form the head of a classical-looking marble bust, later seen to be a couple. Once formed, the shards drift away...