Nine Sydney Festival Experiences You Can Have for Less Than $30

See a powerful collection of dance stories from Bangarra Dance Company’s 30-year history. After spending most of 2020 away from the stage, the group is returning to the spotlight at Sydney Festival with a work that revisits some of the most important pieces from its repertoire to celebrate and acknowledge Aboriginal Australia’s unbroken connections to the land. Djakapurra Munyarryun, a Yolŋu songman from Northeast Arnhem Land, who has been a cultural consultant for Bangarra throughout its life, provides traditional music and choreography, complementing the choreography of Bernadette Walong-Sene and Artistic Director Stephen Page.

Image: Lisa Tomasetti.

When singer George Michael passed away aged 53 in 2016, Sydney DJs and producers Paul Mac and Jonny Seymour commissioned a mural of Michael outside their home in Newtown. It became a site of cultural importance to Sydney’s LGBTQIA+ community, and it was devastatingly destroyed by vandals soon after the marriage equality vote. Now, Mac has teamed up with playwright Lachlan Philpott to create a musical experience as a fitting tribute to the queer icon, while also serving as both a celebration of queer culture and a defiant reminder that freedom is always worth fighting for. Tickets for this show are at capacity, however, you can join the waitlist by clicking through to ‘buy tickets’.

Image: Peter Rubie. 

Performed on Burramatta country, In Situ is both a series of dances within Parramatta Park and an interactive experience. Ten of Sydney’s best choreographers have create a series of solos, performed by the next generation of dance artists. To find the performances, you’ll need to download an interactive map to your phone to help you locate the various dancers, and, as you draw near to a piece, its corresponding music will begin to play through your headphones. This work is created by western Sydney’s Dance Makers Collective (The Rivoli, 2020) and performed by its youth company, Future Makers.

Image: Ro Llauro.

It’s a rare treat to see classical favourites performed by world-class musicians in a beautiful setting. And it’s even rarer for that experience to be completely free, but that’s exactly what’s provided by Sydney Symphony Under the Stars. The environs of Parramatta Park are your backdrop to a program that ranges from enduring music from the 18th century to famous film scores of the modern era. Due to COVID-19, 2021 will mark the first year that Sydney Symphony Under the Stars will be a ticketed event, but music lovers can still stretch out on their favourite picnic rug in the park and enjoy a truly special experience. You’ll just need to register your interest in advance to be notified of when tickets are available.

Since the 1980s, Sydney collective Erth has been pushing the boundaries of innovative theatre with its much-loved puppetry performances. Erth’s work educates while it entertains, and Duba — as well as its sister show Badu at the Maritime Museum — is no exception. Ticketholders will venture into a living underworld to learn about rare, endangered creatures, meet living fungi and encounter the world that lives beneath our feet. Developed in conjunction with international conservation zoos, Duba highlights the vulnerability and fragility of our land-based ecosystems and the creatures that inhabit it. It’s set to be a groundbreaking and unforgettable experience at Carriageworks.

We all know the idiom, but this art installation, in collaboration with The Empathy Museum, invites visitors to literally walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. What’s more, the pop-up store in which you find said footwear is shaped like a giant shoe box. These are real shoes, too, but not just anyone’s; these are the shoes of people with real stories: refugees and migrants who have come to Australia, made it their home and changed the environment around them in the process. You’ll learn, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, but one thing’s for sure — you’ll never think of the famous phrase in the same way again.

How many people does it take for peace to be kept? Sydney Festival looks to answer this question with the installation of Keeping Peace, an inflatable sculpture that relies on the kindness and cooperation of the public to make sure it stays full of air throughout the festival’s duration. The brainchild of New Zealand collective LGOP (Looks Good on Paper), Keeping Peace stands to act as a reminder that we can achieve more when we work together. So, if you see a bright purple peace sign in Barangaroo Reserve that’s looking a little deflated and in need of some love, you know what to do.

The Cleaners is an interactive art piece from Shock Therapy Productions, and it starts life as a three-walled plain white living room, seven metres in the air. “Starts” is the operative word here though; throughout the installation’s run, creators Hayden Jones and Sam Foster undertake the Sisyphean task of trying to keep the room pristine — yet there’s a supply of paint-filled balloons and a catapult at ground level. Uh oh! What follows, and what we all learn in the process, is anyone’s guess. Whatever happens, everyone’s going to love chucking a load of paint at two blokes in cleaning uniforms.

For the first time, Sydney Film Festival and Sydney Festival join forces with a Summer Season at the State Theatre for one weekend only (Jan 15–17). Perhaps the most anticipated of the films on offer is Minari, Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical story of a South Korean family in 1980s rural Arkansas, which won both the Audience and Grand Jury Awards at the Sundance Film Festival, and has a distinct Oscar buzz around it. Co-executive produced by Brad Pitt, Minari won’t see an official Australian release until mid-February, so don’t miss the chance to see the film everyone’s sure to be talking about in 2021.