Grand Finale

Must-See Contemporary Dance by Acclaimed Hofesh Shechter Company

Sydney Opera House | January 29 – February 2

After recently featuring at the Melbourne International Arts Festival, the Hofesh Shechter Company is bringing their spectacular dance work Grand Finale to the Sydney Opera House in February 2020.

Hofesh Shechter, one of contemporary dance’s most celebrated and visionary choreographers, returns to the Sydney Opera House with a new, awe-inspiring work Grand Finale, enthralling audiences in the Drama Theatre from 29 January – 2 February, 2020.

Performed by ten dancers of the Hofesh Shechter Company, with live musicians and the choreography and music in Shechter’s accomplished hands, Grand Finale is a hypnotic blend of dance, theatre and live music.

In the work, Shechter conjures a frighteningly familiar spectacle of the globe at the precipice of apocalypse. The only wry hope comes from the dancers urgently embracing his signature frenetic and ecstatic language – dancing their way to the end of time.

Israeli-born, London-based choreographer Hofesh Shechter is recognised as one of the most exciting artists making stage work today, renowned for composing atmospheric musical scores to complement the unique physicality of his movement. He has staged and choreographed works for leading international dance companies including the Batsheva Ensemble, Nederlands Dans Theater 1, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Ballet and Royal Ballet Flanders, as well as for theatre, television and opera. An Associate Artist at Sadler’s Wells, his previous acclaimed works presented at the Sydney Opera House include Political Mother (2010) and Sun (2014).

Sydney Opera House’s Head of Contemporary Performance, Olivia Ansell, says: “Hofesh Shechter has again delivered an arresting work that has a bold honesty and conflicted heart – it will be an unmissable and confronting season that follows the successful presentations of Political Mother (2010) and Sun (2014) at the Opera House. Grand Finale is timely, relevant and hauntingly beautiful, tapping into the terrifying anxieties of now – it is a must for the Sydney Opera House stage with its searing intensity. I’m thrilled to present it in the Contemporary Performance program.”

Grand Finale was nominated for 2019 Helpmann Awards for Best Dance Production & Best Choreography, following the Australian premiere at Adelaide Festival and the recent season as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival.

Hofesh Shechter Company is a boundary-breaking dance company that produces exceptional work created by Hofesh Shechter, with a diverse tribe of extraordinary international dancers at its core. Based in the UK, but playing on major stages throughout the world, Hofesh Shechter Company’s work celebrates and inspires the freedom of the human spirit. They believe that dance has the ability to prod and poke and tap into our deepest emotions; a visceral part of ourselves that we rarely access in modern life. They dance to know what it feels like, not just to live, but to be alive. In all their work, they strive to move themselves, and their audiences, beyond reason.

Choreography & Music by Hofesh Shechter
Set & Costumes designed by Tom Scutt
Lighting designed by Tom Visser
Music Collaborators: Nell Catchpole and Yaron Engler