Here’s HELEN MUSA’s latest Arts in the City, a weekly look at all things arts around Canberra and beyond.

The perennially popular Sydney Dance Company returns with the world-premiere tour of artistic director Rafael Bonachela’s latest full-scale work, Momenta, set to a score by his favoured Australian composer, Nick Wales. Billed as “a journey into the poetry and physics of human connection,” it runs at Canberra Theatre, June 21-22. 

The Irish Community Players are presenting an original play by Ian Phillips, The First Bloomsday, with live Irish traditional music. It’s an “almost true” telling of the very first Bloomsday, June 16, 1954, which James Joyce immortalised in his novel Ulysses. In it, four Irish writers, Brian O’Nolan (Flann O’Brien), Patrick Kavanagh and Anthony Cronin, with Tom Joyce, set out to recreate the titular Leopold Bloom’s journey. Canberra Irish Club, Weston, June 16. 

Canberra indie folk singer/songwriter/theatre director Ben Drysdale is poised to launch his award-winning “sophomore single”, Listen Now, on June 21, followed by a performance at Smith’s Alternative on June 22 featuring Drysdale with keyboard whiz kid Niall Howe. Fifty per cent of proceeds from Bandcamp sales of the single will be donated to suicide prevention. 

UK Grammy-nominated British a cappella group, Voces8, joins British violinist Jack Liebeck for a performance titled Let My Love be Heard, a portrayal of hope, peace, and renewal. Snow Concert Hall, June 21. 

Marking National Reconciliation Week and the anniversary of the 1967 Referendum, the First Nations Arts and Culture Awards on May 27 have seen Canberra saxophonist, pianist, and composer Brenda Gifford receive the First Nations Fellowship. 

In a kind of Christmas-in-June concert, Canberra Symphony Orchestra, the CSO Chorus and guest artists under the baton of Brett Weymark, will present Handel’s Messiah. Among the greatest hits of classical music, the CSO says, the work has been performed countless times around the world since its 1742 premiere. Llewellyn Hall, June 21.

Dreaming Walter Dreaming Canberra is artist Jeffree Skewes’ large triptych on display in the M16 Artspace foyer. Inspired by his own dream of Walter Burley Griffin hiking about the slopes of Red Hill, the artwork can be seen at 21 Blaxland Crescent, Griffith, until June 9. Skewes will also present a talk in front of his artwork on June 8.