Sydney Festival 2013

Overview

The signature event of our city in summer, the Sydney Festival, kicks off 2013 with the Dirty Projectors, Vivienne Westwood, a series of blind dates, and a giant rubber duckie. They feature among the first line-up curated by new festival director Lieven Bertels. All up more than 750 artists from almost 20 countries will present nearly 100 works of music, performance, and visual arts from January 5-27.

It kicks off with the three free acts of Day One that go from 9.30am until late into the night on Saturday, January 5. We loved Florentijn Hofman's five-storey-high Rubber Duck when it appeared in France's Loire River earlier this year, and we'll love it closer up when it bobs into Cockle Bay to mark the opening of the Sydney Festival in the two-hour spectacle billed The Arrival, complete with acrobats, 3000 littler ducks, and the opening of the Pyrmont Bridge. It's preceded by Fun Run, a theatricalised marathon focusing on one guy on a treadmill in Hyde Park (you can even be a part of it — no running required), and followed by the Daptone Super Soul Revue, a huge outdoor dance party in the Domain that thrills every year.

To make room for the musical carnival winding its way into town, Sydney will re-erect many of last year’s much-loved pop-up music hubs. The Festival Bar is moving to Sydney Town Hall to play host to downtempo electronic producer Nicolas Jaar, sepulchral Mercury Prize nominee Richard Hawley, our own Dappled Cities and nu-disco pioneer Lindstrøm with the Future Classic DJs in tow. Over in Hyde Park, the Festival Garden will be the setting for an eclectic array of indoor and alfresco performances including one by tuneful darling of the interwebs Perfume Genius.

Particularly strong on program 2013 are cutting-edge performances that play at the boundaries of music, theatre, and other worlds. In addition to the jaw-dropping Vivienne Westwood fashion show/Handel opera mash-up Semele Walk, the pioneering 2004 mixed-media work with the Aboriginal title, Eraritjaritjaka, from German Heiner Gobbels gets its first and only Australian staging.

In the tradition of sell-out hits La Clique, Smoke and Mirrors, and last year's Little Match Girl, two house shows will fill the Famous Spiegeltent: dirty-sexy circus cabaret Cantina from Strut & Fret, and Frank Woodley and Simon Yates’ physical theatre and silent comedy INSIDE.

The About an Hour series presents some of the most interesting, cutting-edge works of the festival for just $35, while, thankfully, the Tix for Next to Nix booth will be back in Martin Place, selling $25 tickets to all shows. With this mighty program looming and La Nina gone, we're quite prepared to line up.

Read our list of the 12 best things to see at the Sydney Festival in 2013.