Sydney Dance Company (SDC) has announced its 2026 season, one that Artistic Director Rapheal Bonachela promises will make for a “truly momentous” year for the organisation, which also celebrates 40 years in residency at the Walsh Bay Arts Precinct in 2026.

Sydney Dance Company’s 2026 season image. Photo supplied

“It’s a year of reflection, celebration, reinvention … and empowerment,” Bonachela explains. “Every season we push contemporary dance to its edge, and next year will be something else entirely. Our empowering program celebrates the courage to create, to innovate and to inspire.”

Inspired by the works of 17th-century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō and set to a score by composer Bryce Dessner, Bonachela’s brand-new work The Journey Itself is Home opens the triple bill Engine, which kicks off in Sydney in June before touring across NSW, Western Australia and the Northern Territory until August.

Engine also includes the Australian debut of Berlin-based choreographer Fran Diaz in The Mass Ornament, a mass-movement work that traces human interconnectivity soundtracked by the music of Henryk Górecki, and Melanie Lane’s folk dance-inspired...