A stunning night of music and dance from company at top of its game.

Sydney Theatre
October 8, 2014

Louder Than Words is the latest ambitious double bill from Sydney Dance Company and last night’s opening revealed an ensemble at the very top of their game. Pairing the work of two dance makers, SDC’s Artistic Director Rafael Bonachela and Greek choreographer Andonis Foniadakis, the program is a heady mix of high-octane dance, savvy LX and, in at least one case, genuinely thrilling music.

Bonachela’s Scattered Rhymes forms the first part of the diptych, taking its name from British composer Tarik O’Regan’s 2006 multi-faceted choral work of the same name. The original counterpoints poems by the Florentine author Petrach and an anonymous 14th-century English writer that explore the dichotomy between sensual and divine love. Add a complex, fragmentary score that borrows from Guillaume de Machaut’s harmonically pungent Messe de Notre Dame, but is at all times uniquely O’Regan, and you have one of the finest choral works to have emerged in the last ten years.

It’s a brave...