The annual South Australian celebration of the arts, which opens this week, has already sold over $2.3 million worth of tickets.

David Sefton’s final year in charge of the Adelaide Festival of Arts is set to be one of the most lucrative in the annual event’s 56-year history. Over $2.3 million worth of tickets have already sold for the 2016 Festival’s 27 ticketed events.

“Bringing the highest quality and large-scale international works to South Australia is a cornerstone of Adelaide Festival,” said the Festival’s Chief Executive Karen Bryant in an interview with Arts Review. “These exclusive Australian debuts play a significant role in maintaining the festival’s reputation as one of the country’s major destination events and driving the state’s tourism industry.”

One of the world’s most celebrated dance companies, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, will give an Australian exclusive performance of Nelken, in which twenty dancers will present the strikingly surreal piece on a stage carpeted in pink carnations. The company gave their debut Australian performance at the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 1982, and Nelken has become the fastest-selling dance show in the Festival’s 55-year history....