In a pre-show chat with his opening night audience Sydney Dance Company’s artistic director Rafael Bonachela described Current in three words: energy, power and joy. I’d add intimacy to the list. Co-operation and collaboration too. The cleverly named Current is a highly charged group hug.

OUR(SELF) (Azzam Mohamed). Photo © Daniel Boud

The venue is SDC’s Neilson Studio, a flexible black-box space right at the end of SDC’s buzzy Walsh Bay headquarters. To find it you walk through the café, past studios where public dance classes are underway and there it is. It’s hard to believe SDC has been on Wharf 4/5 for 40 years but it’s celebrating that milestone right now. Some of us can remember the before times; these times are better.

For the Current (and current) performances the Neilson is dominated by a low, raised rectangular stage. There are two rows of seats for an audience of about 150 that sits only centimetres away from the performance area.

It’s not exactly touching distance (which is wise) but if a dancer is right at the edge of the stage, it’s possible to make strong eye contact (wonderful). The point is that being in the space is part of the experience. Anyone who saw Bonachela’s Somos in 2023 or last year won’t have forgotten it. The atmospherics are enticing.

Current has a bold concept. There are four works, three of them premieres, each lasting only 12 minutes and performed without a break between them in less than an hour. The already existing work is Bonachela’s E2 7SD. The duet was made in 2004 and won Bonachela an extremely substantial choreographic prize that allowed him to set up his own dance company in London. As he prepares to pass SDC to a new, yet-to-be-hired, Artistic Director (the changeover happens next year) it is moving to see this work, so important to Bonachela’s life story, staged in Sydney.

Its 12-minute length didn’t have to be a template for the other works, but the sections of identical length give Current and its constituent parts a pleasing structure and focus. Also pleasing is the gathering of choreographers from different backgrounds and styles. Finally, the use of increasing numbers of dancers – two, then six, then seven, then 12 – gives Current momentum.

Bonachela’s work takes its name from the postcode of his London home all those years ago, but has been transposed to a warmer climate. It is urban through and through as two tough-minded people negotiate a relationship of crackling discord shot through with need, tenderness and the stuff of everyday life. On opening night, Lucy Angel and Jai Fauchon are the casually clad lovers, equal in emotional force and physical authority. There’s nothing like a strong final image to bring everything together and Bonachela’s is just lovely.

Current (Rafael Bonachela). Photo © Daniel Boud

Jenni Large, SDC’s 2026 Balnaves Artist in Residence, uses her time to explore patterns of behaviour, those bred into us and the ones we strain against. Dogs are an “irresistible metaphor” for Large, hence her title Alpha Mutt. Slow motion, unusual lifts, intense flashes of light, super-chic black outfits that cover bits of the dancers but not others, duos, trios, group huddles, slithering, crawling and all-fours locomotion are all part of the stimulating picture. It looks fabulous and rather forbidding. You’d also like to see it again immediately.

Azzam Mohamed brings his Sudanese background and street dance perspective to (OUR)SELF. The look is running shoes, track pants, casual tops and jeans; the spirit is of community and sharing. Dancers stand and watch each other intently, catching their breath or smiling with the pleasure of being part of the gang. At a given signal they become a cohesive group, moving not only as one but as individuals to the beat. It’s just gorgeous to see.

There are moments of pure ecstasy in (OUR)SELF as there are in Raghav Handa’s ONE SONG, although in ONE SONG the ecstatic feels closer to the divine sense of the word than the human. Handa’s inspiration was Sydney’s eccentrics, expressed via a dance language that bears the tint of his Kathak training. At the start a dishevelled but charismatic man shares the stage with a woman whose poses are beautifully composed and refined.

Alpha Mutt (Jenni Large). Photo © Daniel Boud

When more dancers arrive, they form a lovely wheeling line that splinters. The stage gets wilder and wilder as dancers stomp and spin, at which point, at least on opening night, the audience is impelled to involuntary shouts. Everyone is together in this and it’s thrilling.

There are new costumes by Aleisa Jelbart for all the works and exciting new scores for the three premieres by Louis Frere-Harvey,  Jack Prest and James Peter Brown. Alexander Berlage lights the entire program. It’s an impressive line-up.

Current has an embarrassment of riches, and the experienced dancegoer could feel they wanted each work to be more extended. Still, a short show isn’t to be sniffed at in these busy times. Better to leave wanting more than less. And for neophytes who’d like to give contemporary dance a go, Current is an extremely superior tasting menu.

Current is at Sydney Dance Company’s Neilson Studio until 20 September.