★★★★½ A welcome return, with a new addition, for a mighty marriage of movement and music.

Two years ago I said that I would be first in the queue for a restaging of what was then a pair of revelatory dance pieces set to music by Benjamin Britten. Now the chance has come, and the Sydney Dance Company Artistic Director has cannily added a third to make Triptych – a cohesive and compelling evening of Britten and Bonachela. Although I missed the intense intimacy of the Opera House studio space, the new presentation, which caters for proscenium theatres, adds a new dimension and allows the full company to appear in the third part, Variation 10 – an interpretation for ten dancers of the virtuosic Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge.

One other observation that occurred to me watching these works was a sense of homage to a past; a nostalgic yearning for the playful innocence for the era of Britten’s own childhood; a time when post-Edwardians like the Bloomsbury set or the Sitwells would dress up in Greek attire and frolic Isadora Duncan-like on the lawns. That may never have crossed the mind of Bonachela and his designer Toni Maticevski, but there was a particular resonance I felt, especially in the floating chiffons of Variation 10.

As in its previous incarnation, the evening leaps into life with Britten’s charming early work for string orchestra, Simple Symphony, employing two pairs of dancers and examining the playful side of lovemaking in a series of sparkling duets and one ingenious quartet. Boisterous Bourée is all secret smiles as two dancers engage in leaps, lifts and courtly lovemaking. Playful Pizzicato involves a great deal of flirtatiousness between our first couple and a second who arrive to stir things up as the dancers conspire to inflame each other’s passions and jealousies. The Sentimental Sarabande (beautifully danced by Todd Sutherland, Fiona Jopp) is a graceful pas de deux, almost classical in the stillness of its execution, and notable for the girl effortlessly taking the boys weight as often as not. Frolicsome Finale is all bouncy cheekiness, a bit like choreographic hide and seek or a game of twister.

Les Illuminations is a much darker affair of love laced with yearning, betrayal, loss of innocence and a dash of cruelty. Maticevski’s costumes for Rimbaud’s “savage parade” combine a cabaret-like sexiness with a dash of fetish wear. A couple of years on and Katie Noonan’s grasp of Britten’s tricky vocal lines has matured allowing her to engage the text with greater confidence. Her appealing silvery soprano is skilfully blended with the excellent ACO2 strings to produce a homogenous sound picture, less grand soloist, more ensemble.

Katie Noonan and ACO2 join Sydney Dance Company

The four superb dancers strut and posture narcissistically though Villes, always aware of themselves as they reveal their sexual identities to their fellow travellers. In Phrase, the superb Cass Mortimer Eipper and Charmene Yap circle circle each other like cats on heat, never touching, but with a sexual charge that makes the air crackle. Richard Cilli and Juliette Barton take things a step further as they entwine in Antique.

The dark heart of the piece is Interlude, an aching duet for Mortimer Eipper and Yap that reveals a couple unable to shake off the suspicion of betrayal. Being Beauteous then becomes a duet of distrust, laced with hints of slow motion violence. Bonachela here finds the heart of Britten’s cycle, matching it with choreography of enormous intensity and encouraging his dancers to act with far more than bodies alone. Finally, Bonachela sets Départ as a highly erotic dance for two male dancers. The sexual chemistry created by Cilli and Mortimer Eipper should come with a parental warning (joke).

On to the new, Variation 10, and here Bonachela combines the ideas of the two preceding works in a fluid series of solos, duets and ensemble pieces that can be alternately playful and sad, sexy and barren. Romping across the stage, at times like something out of a period Health and Efficiency advert, his energetic dancers clearly enjoy the sense of fun and games while relishing the chance to become children at heart (another Britten idée fixe of course). On several occasions Bonachela has cleverly paired his dancers to imply sibling rivalry, as in the Bourée Classique variation where Fiona Jopp, Alana Sargent, Petros Treklis and Todd Sutherland capture a sense of two sisters flirting with a pair of brothers. On other occasions the impression is of two gangs of five squaring up with a sinister edge à la Lord of the Flies.

The dark heart that Bonachela lays bare here comes in Britten’s Funeral March variation, an intense and regret-filled duet for Jesse Scales and David Mack followed by a brief stunning solo for Richard Cilli (Reverence) laced with loneliness and a restless despair. The wheeling and leaping finale wound everything up by combining the sense of plein air fun and games with the odd sexual encounter – I’m sure Britten and Pears would have loved it (though the former probably wouldn’t have joined in).

Triptych is at Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay until October 10.