Sydney Festival

Sydney Festival, large annual performing- and visual-arts festival held during three weeks in January in Sydney, Austl. It features music, dance, and a variety of theatrical performances.

The first Sydney Festival was held in January 1977 with the goal of attracting Australians and others to Sydney during Australia’s summer holidays and of showcasing both international and local artists. Events of this cultural celebration are inaugurated by Festival First Night, an enormous free party held on the first Saturday of the festival.

Festival First Night attracts some 250,000 people. Entertainment for children includes such activities as an outdoor circus, circus workshops, and Bollywood dance lessons. There are also free performances by a number of musicians and musical groups, previews of upcoming festival shows, and dozens of other attractions across the city. Cars are banished from the streets, and people gather at several street venues, in smaller parks, and especially in City Central’s Hyde Park, Australia’s oldest parkland. Free events of a similar nature also are offered on the following two Saturdays.

Between free Saturday celebrations, the Sydney Festival stages more than 300 performances and more than 80 events—such as keynote speakers and visual art exhibits—in more than 20 venues, including the Sydney Opera House. More than one million people attend the various festival events, which in 2010, for example, included a string quartet, the American folk-rock group Grizzly Bear, avant-garde reinterpretations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the classical ballet Giselle, and a wordless dramatization of a graphic novel.