★★★★½ A welcome return, with a new addition, for a mighty marriage of movement and music.

Two years ago I said that I would be first in the queue for a restaging of what was then a pair of revelatory dance pieces set to music by Benjamin Britten. Now the chance has come, and the Sydney Dance Company Artistic Director has cannily added a third to make Triptych – a cohesive and compelling evening of Britten and Bonachela. Although I missed the intense intimacy of the Opera House studio space, the new presentation, which caters for proscenium theatres, adds a new dimension and allows the full company to appear in the third part, Variation 10 – an interpretation for ten dancers of the virtuosic Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge.

One other observation that occurred to me watching these works was a sense of homage to a past; a nostalgic yearning for the playful innocence for the era of Britten’s own childhood; a time when post-Edwardians like the Bloomsbury set or the Sitwells would dress up in Greek attire and frolic Isadora Duncan-like on the lawns. That may never have crossed the mind of...