Fresh face among veterans in Sydney Dance Company’s 2025 season

Self-proclaimed ‘dance artist’ Tra Mi Dinh has her sights set on shaking up the stage she shares with contemporary dance veterans Rafael Bonachela and Stephen Page for Sydney Dance Company’s 2025 season.

Tra Mi Dinh and Rafael Bonachela.

Tra Mi Dinh describes her favourite time of the day as the period in the evening when the sun falls somewhere between 10 and 14 degrees below the horizon. This transitory moment during dusk is the “sweet spot”, the Melbourne-based choreographer tells The Australian, “that is the only other time outside of dancing where I really feel like a human”.

Hence the title of her standout work Somewhere between ten and fourteen, that will be part of Sydney Dance Company’s triple bill Continuum, announced Tuesday as part of its 2025 season. Dinh has emerged as the new face among veterans Rafael Bonachela and Steve Page, as the headline choreographer.

“I definitely think there’s a big ‘new kid on the block’ energy going on for me,” Dinh laughs.

Somewhere between ten and fourteen was first performed in 2023 as part of the company’s annual showcase of emerging talent, New Breed.

It was there that she caught the eye of artistic director Bonachela.

Somewhere between ten and fourteen was first performed as part of Sydney Dance Company's 2023 New Breed program.

“When I program, I think about the things that we haven’t done before, and to reinvent Tra Mi’s work for the main stage together with me and with Stephen, is a way of cultivating new voices, new talents,” Bonachela says.

“For me to be a good leader, we need to contextualise emerging stars like Tra Mi with us … I’m here because people felt at some point that I had some sort of talent.”

Put simply, “we don’t see jealousy, we see artistry,” he laughs.

Dinh’s career did not follow a similar trajectory to her counterparts. For Bonachela, whose appointment as artistic director of company began in 2009, and Page, who only stepped away as artistic director of Bangarra Dance Theatre at the end of 2022, after 31 years at the helm, Dinh exhibits a new age approach, opting for a freelance, self-described ‘dance artist’ career, with no distinct attachment to any one company.

The term, Dinh says, heralds a new era – and reality – for emerging choreographers, combating the idea that dancers lack autonomy until they are established directors, and “are just told what to do and how to do it”.

Somewhere between ten and fourteen returns, marking Dinh’s debut on Sydney Dance Company’s main stage.

“Using the term dance artist reminds me that I’m not just a young dancer throwing moves together – that I do respect the artistry that comes with it and has come before me,” she shares, reflecting on a career that has to date included work for Lucy Guerin Inc, Chunky Move, Stephanie Lake Company, and more.

In 2022 she received the prestigious Keir Choreographic Award for her work The ___, in which two dancers oscillate through shifting scenes seeking to confront the challenge of the finality of “endings”.

The work’s focus on movement that is surprising, and at times, absurd, Dinh admits, is part of crafting an often complex relationship with her audience.

“Contemporary dance is a hard art form – it’s this weird, abstract, rolling around on the floor and people can think ‘this doesn’t look beautiful to me’,” she says.

“I try to focus on forming things like a visual arts painting and making the dance about eliciting a visceral feeling that’s coming from inside, from watching this experience unfold.”

This aligns with Bonachela’s vision for Sydney Dance Company’s 2025 season: he hopes to bring a degree of “freedom” to the stage.

“We live in a world that is so full of narrative, so full of so much every day, that we become numb and we need to be enlightened,” he says.

“The arts has become as divisive as the world we’re living in, and with this program, we want to inspire joy – build on hope, build on togetherness, free ourselves from having to question everything.”

Bonachela will revive his much-loved Somos for the first instalment of 2025's program.

The season will commence with an encore of Bonachela’s most personal work to date, Somos, a distinctly Spanish show, featuring a cascade of solos, duets and trios, premiering first in Melbourne before returning to Sydney.

Dinh’s Somewhere between ten and fourteen is part of the program’s triple bill, with Page’s Unungkati Yantatja (with a score played live by Australia’s leading Yidaki player, William Barton and the Omega Ensemble); and a world premiere of a Bonachela work to be announced early next year.

Concluding the program with the 12th consecutive year of New Breed, the company will also embark on an international tour of Sydney Dance Company’s repertoire piece Two Fold to Slovenia, France (Paris), and further countries to be announced.

Bonachela however, says the planned regional tour, of Momenta, an eclectic celebration of light and life with explosive spatial patterns that transcend the scope of physical limitation, is far closer to his heart, given he was born in a small town near Barcelona.

“There was no dance school and I never got to see dance, unless I went far out of my hometown” he shares.

“In my 17th year as director, we now have performers in our company who saw us perform regionally for a school matinee and felt inspired – and motivated enough – to join us years on.”

It’s such a unity, Dinh remarks, that makes it so much easier to share the main stage with the veteran choreographers.

“During the photo shoot for the program announcement, Stephen and Raf were told to put their hands on my shoulders,” she shares.

“Stephen just laughed and said, we’re like her uncles in choreography!”