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...