There will be no more New Breed after this 12th season. Sydney Dance Company and indefatigable backer The Balnaves Foundation have moved on to other ways of supporting independent contemporary choreographers. Nothing stays the same.

Adventurous Sydney dance audiences will have to turn their attention to SDC’s INDance program, which unlike the all-premieres New Breed chooses existing works and gives them another life. But for now there’s the final New Breed to celebrate.

Last year one of the choreographers who got the nod for INDance was Harrison Ritchie-Jones from Melbourne/Naarm with CUDDLE. He’s back for New Breed with Pigeon Humongous, a title that combines elements of the whimsical and surreal with a touch of horror movie thrown in. (He’s good with titles: another of Ritchie-Jones’s works is TANTRUM for 6.)

Pigeon Humongous (Harrison Ritchie-Jones). Photo © Pedro Greig

In Pigeon Humongous Ritchie-Jones’s protagonists live in a post-apocalyptic world where, thanks to a virus, humans have transmogrified into “punk pigeon people”. Well, metaphorically speaking, although some costume elements have references to avian life. There are some fluffy little jerkins and leggings as well as a few close-fitting caps that suggest a bird’s head, thanks to brilliant costume designer Aleisa Jelbart (she dressed all the works).

Otherwise we have a relatively standard dystopian set-up, sombrely lit by Alexander Berlage and with a pumping score by Nicholas Roder, except for the fact that Ritchie-Jones’s choreography is far from standard.

As Ritchie-Jones says in a brief pre-show video, he takes inspiration from a wide range of partnering vocabulary. It’s a choice that gives his work immediacy, texture and humanity. There’s the intimacy of contact improvisation, the community of folk, the flashiness of commercial dance, the formality of ballroom and more, seen flickering through a flock of eight people as they embrace and quarrel ferociously.

The overarching atmosphere is of tough urban swagger sitting precariously on top of deep pain. Pigeon Humongous is simultaneously simple and direct and extremely sophisticated in structure and thinking. Moving, too. The dancing is spectacular and the dancers’ acting is thrilling.

Pigeon Humongous ends New Breed – both this iteration and the whole project – with a real rush. It’s worth the price of admission alone but definitely not the only piece worthy of close attention.

marathon, o marathon (Emma Fishwick). Photo © Pedro Greig

Ngaere Jenkins is an SDC dancer making her choreographic debut with From the horizon thereafter. It’s a delicate piece lasting only about 10 minutes but leaving a lasting perfume. Jenkins, from Aotearoa/New Zealand, has made a memory piece that evokes the landscape of her home as if seen through a veil. Berlage’s sensitive lighting (he lit all the works) plays a key role. Stillness, quiet, tenderness, some resolved tension and Jenkins’s seemingly innate sense of timing and structure pervade the work. It is very, very lovely.

Emma Fishwick’s marathon, o marathon has a solid centre but some peripheral – or seemingly peripheral – elements weaken its effect. As the work’s name suggests, there’s a long haul ahead and we might not make it.

From the horizon thereafter (Ngaere Jenkins). Photo © Pedro Greig

Fishwick, from Perth/Boorloo, is most persuasive when she has dancers forming and reforming groups on the move and the recitation of what I assume are marathon running times, going down to the fastest so far and then back up again, has its power. The summoning of medieval times looks tacked on and the moving around of a tarpaulin adds nothing. On the plus side, the use of Allan Ginsburg’s Father Death Blues in Tristen Parr’s sound design is spot-on.

Save Point (Ryan Pearson). Photo © Pedro Greig

Another SDC dancer, Ryan Pearson, opens New Breed with the brief and enigmatic Save Point. It’s not as immediately engaging as his 5 Minute Call, made for Bangarra’s Dance Clan in 2023 but is similarly inspired by his youth. In Save Point a central figure seemingly outfitted from the dress-up box leads the way with a rake as his standard as others – friends and family? – rise as if from sleep to join him. Household items become playthings and the dance is lively and joyous.

It’s not a lot, really, but sweetly conceived – and one of 49 new works commissioned in total by New Breed in its dozen programs. A fine legacy.

New Breed is at Carriageworks, Sydney, until December 13.