Plan Your Next Date Night Around This Year's Sydney Festival

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If your last couple of dates have consisted of dinner and a movie, or a few drinks at your local bar, it's time to spice things up a little. With the Sydney Festival rolling into town in January — transforming our city into a creative playground for three weeks — there are heaps of opportunities to take your date night game up a good couple of notches. Options for creative dates abound, with shows ranging from thought-provoking art exhibitions to mind-blowing circus and saucy burlesque.

Crafting the perfect date can be a challenge, though, especially when there are so many options to choose from. To help ensure your date is a smashing success, we've designed three itineraries that are guaranteed to blow your significant other away. Choose from an afternoon of circusy excitement in Parramatta, an evening of photography and music in central Sydney or a night of freaky fun at the Meriton Festival Village. Each itinerary features some of the festival's best events and a meal at a partner restaurant that has special deals for festival goers (being a cultured being has its perks). Saturday date plans officially sorted.

Prudence Upton.

AN AFTERNOON OF CIRCUSY FUN IN PARRAMATTA

1pm: Flying Trapeze Workshops, Prince Alfred Square

Kickstart your date by taking it to the next level (literally) with a workshop by the Sydney Trapeze School. This two-hour class ($49 + booking fee) is geared towards beginners and will have you soaring through the air on a ten-metre-high trapeze rig practising your newly-acquired aerial skills in no time.

2.15 pm: Lunch at The Emporium Parramatta

Learning to fly with the greatest of ease can be hard work. Reward yourselves with a leisurely lunch at The Emporium Parramatta. A short stroll across Lennox Bridge, this beautiful Mediterranean-influenced restaurant is serving up a $30 lunch for Sydney Festival goers.

3.30pm: Aerialize workshop, Riverside Theatre

Once you're refuelled, head back to Circus City for some more acrobatic training at a free workshop by Sydney's premier circus training centre, Aerialize. Learn how to juggle, hula hoop or pick up some basic aerial skills in these hands-on classes that are open to all ages and abilities.

5.30pm: Backbone, Riverside Theatre

After a full day of circus training and moving your body in ways you didn't realise you could, it's time to take a load off and see how the professionals do it. Backbone, by acrobatic troupe Gravity & Other Myths, is an incredible feat of collective strength, flexibility and stamina, highlighted by a lighting display shimmering ever-so-slightly and designed to keep you on the edge of your seat. After the performance, you may find yourselves so inspired you'll repeat this circusy day all over again.

Joel Chester Fildes.

AN EVENING OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND DANCE

4pm: Tell: Contemporary Indigenous Photography, UNSW Galleries

Start your artsy date night with this ground-breaking photography exhibition, featuring works by 17 leading Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. This free show explores heritage and identity in unconventional forms, using cutting-edge photographic technologies to articulate the varied experiences of life as an Indigenous person in Australia.

5pm: In Your Dreams, UNSW Galleries

Once you've thoroughly explored Tell, slide on over to In Your Dreams, the second photography show housed at the UNSW Galleries during the festival. This free photo and video exhibition sees renowned artists like Alejandro Cartagena, Sim Chi Yin and Andres Serrano addressing the pressing global themes of poverty, displacement and homelessness.

6.30pm: Dinner at Kindred

Once you've had your fill of photography, stroll down Cleveland Street to Kindred. This cosy spot is the perfect place for you and your bae to go Lady and the Tramp over a big bowl of house-made pasta. Nestle in and get yourself some delicious nosh from the $30 Festival Feast menu.

8pm: Tree of Codes, ICC

After dinner, hop in an Uber, direction: ICC, to see ballet Tree of Codes, inspired by novelist Jonathan Safran Foer's book of the same name. Not every ballet features dancers forming constellations, gramophone-shaped mirrors creating kaleidoscopic visuals, refractive and reflective surfaces making it appear as though performers are overlapping, and choreography created for every leaf in a 134-page text  — but not every ballet is Tree of Codes. Top off your night with this stunning ballet from a stellar collaboration between Jamie xx, Royal Ballet choreographer Wayne McGregor and Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. Only in Sydney for five days, you'll want to snag some tickets to this — your special someone will definitely thank you.

Carnival Cinema.

A NIGHT OF WILD AND WONDERFUL EXPERIENCES AT THE MERITON FESTIVAL VILLAGE

7.30pm: Dinner at Madame Shanghai

Start your night by wooing your significant other with dinner at Madame Shanghai, a gorgeous restaurant that's all dark wooden tables, wicker chairs and jade and gold accents aplenty. The menu ($55 for the Festival Feast) is equally good-looking, featuring dishes inspired by Shanghai-style street food and luscious cocktails.

9pm: Freaky Fun at the Meriton Festival Village Sideshow

After dinner, head to the Meriton Festival Village for a few hours of kidulting at the Village Sideshow. This 'freaky fun' park is packed with a variety of wild and wonderful experiences that all but guarantee a memorable date night.

Start with Ghost Train ($10), a virtual reality journey along a reimagined fairground ride where nostalgia meets the digital future to mind-blowing effect. Next, shake off the scares with a ride on the Karaoke Carousel ($5), where you can belt out your favourite hits as you ride a unicorn in circles. Round it all out with a ten-minute dance party ($5) in a converted shipping container — a brilliant concept that lets you experience the joys of a full night out in a minimal amount of time.

10.30pm: Briefs: Close Encounters, Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent, Meriton Festival Village

Next up is Close Encounters ($70-80 + booking fee), the latest offering from the insanely popular Aussie boylesque troupe, Briefs. If you haven't seen these icons in action before, you're in for a treat. Expect a cheeky sci-fi spectacle performed with the troupe's characteristic combination of circus, comedy, drag, burlesque and contemporary dance. It's as creative, glamorous and thrilling as it sounds.

Late: Finish off dancing to one of the nightly DJs

If Close Encounters and the ten-minute party have got you in the mood for some dancing, head back to the Meriton Festival Village and get that bod on the dance floor. With DJs every night and a large bar area, you and your SO will be throwing shapes until the wee hours of the morning. It's bound to be a date night for the books.

Top image: Jamie Williams.

Looking for more things to do? Discover the best free things to do, some ace music events and even more on the Sydney Festival website.