The Ten Best Things to See at the Sydney Festival 2015

Lazing on the beach all summer might flood your vitamin D levels and calm your heart rate, but it does nothing for your mental faculties. For that, we have the Sydney Festival, our summer side dish of culture, new music worth listening to, mind-bending public art and general brain food. Spiegeltents, labyrinths, The Life Aquatic cameos and unlikely Japanese team-ups — it's the kind of substance that makes the whole season stick in the mind for years afterwards.

The festival is on from January 8-26, but if you want to enjoy those bright 2.5 weeks, it's best to get booking now. Here are just ten of our favourite things to see from the nearly 200 events across music, performance and public art.

ATOMIC BOMB! THE MUSIC OF WILLIAM ONYEABOR

William Onyeabor is perhaps the most mysterious man ever to have fused Afro-funk with space-age jams. After powering through the creation of eight albums over just as many years, he suddenly decided to stop talking: about himself or his music. However, it's a well-known fact that it takes an awful lot to 'stop the funk'. So, in what's certain to be one of the hands-down most epic musical events of Sydney Festival, an 18-strong band made up of artists from all over the world are getting together to jam on Onyeabor's music at the Enmore Theatre. Led by Sinkane, Money Mark, Luke Jenner (The Rapture), Alexis Taylor (Hot Chip) and Pat Mahoney (LCD Soundsystem), the performance will feature special guests in the form of Gotye and the legendary Mahotella Queens.

16 and 17 January, 8pm at Enmore Theatre. Tickets $85/77.

INSIDE THERE FALLS

UK artist Mira Calix teams up with the Sydney Dance Company's Rafael Bonachela for this stunning installation, combining sculpture, dance, spoken word and music. Over the past year or two, Calix has been busy in her studio, shaping vast sheets of paper into an ethereal labyrinth, which will be transported to Carriageworks for the Sydney Festival. On entering, visitors will find themselves immersed in a surreal, shimmering world, where they'll hear snippets of poetic prose spoken by actor Hayley Atwell, strains of classical music and, every now and again, catch sight of a dancer. Even though the dancing has been choreographed, performances won't be scheduled: it'll be a matter of taking your chances. Sounds like the perfect, dreamy summer escape.

8-17 January at Carriageworks. Free.

DAN DEACON

If you're heading to Dan Deacon's show, don't forget your smartphone, whatever you do. Because it's your key to becoming an actual, live part of his gig. Before rocking up, audience members are asked to download an app, which will enable them to play an active role in his spectacular, synchronised sound and light extravaganza. Deacon, who hails from Baltimore, will be in rare solo form and is set to deliver one of his wildest, most chaotic and most fun performances yet.

22 January, 11.45pm at Festival Village. Tickets $39.

KISS & CRY

The hands can say so much. Think of all the gestures of welcome, surrender and (perhaps most memorably) offence we use when words fail us. Yet what we didn't expect to see is a stage show entirely starring two hands, communicating that complexity we all know so achingly well: love. An old woman reflects back on the encounters that shaped her life in this poetic ballet, puppet show and live film experience, performed in a miniature set. Presented by Belgium's Charleroi Danses, Kiss & Cry comes from the bonafide talents of choreographer Michele Anne De Mey (a founding member of Rosas dance company) and filmmaker Jaco Van Dormael, director of 2009 sci-fi film Mr Nobody.

22-25 January at Carriageworks. Tickets $59-75.

CORNELIUS PRESENTS SALYU X SALYU

All the way from Japan, this collaboration between noise pop guru Cornelius and enigmatic J-pop vocalist Salyu will make its Australian premiere at the Sydney Festival. They're a potent match: while Cornelius has the beats finesse to keep any crowd on its feet until the wee hours, Salyu has the vocal skill and dynamic to keep him on his toes. She is, after all, the artist responsible for 'Kaifuku No Kizu', from Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. Expect plenty of surprises.

23 January, 5.15pm at Festival Village. Tickets $49.

HIGHER GROUND

Home to much of the festival's music, two Spiegeltents will be anchoring the expanding Festival Village, one of the real successes of last year and a true hub for hanging out in. Also within it will be a huge-scale art work from Ireland's answer to Banksy, street artist Maser. The maze-like, colour-splashed, two-storey-high installation, called Higher Ground, is said to be "a dream come true for those who always wished they could step inside a painting", and will be the focus of everyone's Instagramming this festival (which for the first time in two years, is Rubber Duck-less). Maser will be the artist-in-residence at the Village, though as he operates in anonymity, we don't expect to see too much of him.

January 8-25 at Hyde Park North. Free.

NOTHING TO LOSE

When Kevin Bacon stood up in Footloose and said, "This is our time to dance. It is our way of celebrating life." What he didn't say was "but only for slim, athletic people". And yet, that seems to be what we mean these days. Fat dancers and performers aren't often seen, and so many people seem to have so many opinions on fatness and how fat people move through our society. Well, fat activist and artists Kelli Jean Drinkwater and resigning Force Majeure artistic director Kate Champion want us to broaden our outlook on the body and the act of dancing. This work is important, topical and, coming from dance-theatre masters Force Majeure (Never Did Me Any Harm, Food), sure to be powerful and original.

Read our chat Kelli Jean Drinkwater and Kate Champion here.

21-25 January at Carriageworks. Tickets $59-65.

SEU JORGE

There's not many a cover artist can teach David Bowie about music. But when the art-rock king heard Seu Jorge perform his hits acoustically, in Portuguese, for The Life Aquatic, he said he heard a whole "new level of beauty". That is certainly no easily earned praise. Seu Jorge, who cut his deep yet irresistibly tender voice in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will make his debut Australian performance at Sydney Festival. He'll be playing an array of his famous, unique interpretations, as well as a bunch of originals, accompanied by a delicious mix of Latin and Caribbean beats, in both live and electronic form.

Read our chat with Seu Jorge right here.

10 January, 8pm in The Domain (free) and 11 January, 8pm at The Star Event Centre. Tickets $45-89.

ADRIENNE TRUSCOTT'S ASKING FOR IT

It's a longstanding qualm some people have with female comedians that they're always talking about their genitalia. Those people might not enjoy this show. Returning to Australia for the second time in 2014, US comedian, performance artist and one half of the Wau Wau Sisters Adrienne Truscott is quite literally bearing all in a one-woman show about rape culture. Dressed only from the waist up, Truscott is taking aim at the likes of Daniel Tosh and his controversial comments of 2013, and is dragging the art of the 'rape joke' to breaking point. After five-star reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe, this is likely to be one the most-talked about shows of the festival (for better or worse).

14-18 January at Seymour Centre. Tickets $35.

WATERFALL SWING

"This interactive waterfall swing won't make you wish you're a kid again, it will make you forget you're an adult," wrote Techly earlier this year, after Dash 7 Design's Waterfall Swing made waves in Rockefeller Plaza and across the US and Europe. And we wouldn't be Concrete Playground if we didn't get a bit excited by a souped up piece of play equipment in the middle of the city. Waterfall Swing sends you flying towards a curtain of water that, thanks to the work of sensors, parts just before you hit it. Magic.

8-24 January at Cockle Bay, Darling Harbour. Free.

By the Concrete Playground team.