Sydney Dance Company with ACO2 and Katie Noonan. Roslyn Packer Theatre Walsh Bay, Sydney, September 29.

BENJAMIN Britten was in his 20s when he wrote the three works to which Rafael Bonachela responds so ardently in Triptych. Innocence, desire, joy, playfulness and sensuality all have their role in the music and the evocation of the bloom and juice of youth is captivating.

Bonachela has revived two dances from 2013 and newly created a third for an evening in which movement and music have a lively – and, it’s wonderful to say, live – conversation. Even better, the 16 string players from ACO2 are not confined to a pit but sit on a platform at the rear of the stage, generating warmth and visceral connection, advantages we humans still have over machines in an age where much – most – contemporary dance is performed to recorded music. Well, there is one drawback: sometimes the eye is drawn inexorably over the heads of dancers to a musician making a particularly arresting contribution. Thomas Gould, directing from the violin, has form with Britten and he has the group – the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s youth ensemble – playing superbly.

The dancers responded eagerly, as has Bonachela. In his hands Sydney Dance Company never looks less than elegant, sleek, powerful, sophisticated, glamorous and any other adjective you might think of in this neck of the woods. Those qualities make the company always highly watchable but the effect can be emotionally cool, a situation amplified, if you will forgive the little wordplay, when the music is coming from speakers. One understands why the reliance on recording – it’s the economy, stupid. So we must be very grateful for the times when finances allow a program such as Triptych.

Simple Symphony and Les Illuminations (performed together as Les Illuminations) were a big success when first seen at the Sydney Opera House two years ago. They were supposed to have been part of the Opera House’s Spring Dance festival, of which Bonachela was artistic director, but the Opera House pulled the plug on the four-year-old event “for financial reasons”. It seemed there wasn’t enough audience appetite for a dance festival of this kind in Sydney.

Les Illuminations survived to be seen for handful of performances in the Studio at the Opera House and was also performed in Brisbane last year, but that was for one night only. You couldn’t say Les illuminations has been over-exposed. Now, in company with Variation 10, also to music by Britten, the dances will be seen much more widely.

The four light-hearted movements of Simple Symphony (1933-34) propel a series of duos and a quarter that suggest the larks of lovers tumbling about on a summer’s afternoon. The mood is light, bright and optimistic. Janessa Dufty with Bernhard Knauer and Fiona Jopp with Todd Sutherland caught the sunny nature of the music and were sweetly uncomplicated in their relationships, twirling each other about with sparkling eyes, fleet feet and much give and take. Jopp supported Sutherland as he extended his leg high to the side while on demi-pointe, a gorgeous, generous unfolding of the body; Dufty used Knauer’s horizontal body as a steadying point for a cheerful cartwheel; every now and again a dancer would lightly touch their partner’s face. Just lovely.

Simple Symphony was followed immediately, as in 2013, with the darker intimations of the song cycle Les Illuminations (1939). Once again soprano Katie Noonan was the divinely silky, agile interpreter of texts by bad-boy French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud as two rather more dangerous couples took the field. Cass Mortimer Eipper and Charmene Yap with Juliette Barton and Richard Cilli were the opening-night protagonists, dressed in slinky black garments that had a touch of kink about them. Eroticism rather than flirtation is the game. Barton in particular was dramatic and dangerous but all four had quite an edge as they prowled and entwined. There’s was real frisson when they swapped partners, ending up with their own sex. The women were spiky and tough while the men were more tender, a salute to the orientation of poet and composer.

Bonachela’s new full-company piece, Variation 10, takes its cue from qualities Britten saw in his composition teacher Frank Bridge or felt for him, including charm, humour, vitality, sympathy and reverence. Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937) is an open-hearted tribute to the man who, as author and conductor Paul Kildea writes, taught Britten “how to live and think as an artist”. Bonachela takes a fairly literal approach. Knees are lifted comically high in Aria Italiana (humour) and Chant (reverence) is a mournful solo given gravitas on opening night by Cilli. Funeral March (sympathy) not surprisingly has a sombre feel but was energised with fierce physicality.

Jesse Scales and David Mack were outstanding in Funeral March, answering the throbbing beats from the plucked double bass with passionate intensity. But everywhere you looked there were dancers giving individual shading and detail to Bonachela’s high-octane choreography. Bonachela has a way with partnering that gives women equal strength and authority with men, a desirable state not always seen in dance and a great credit to him.

It’s a shame Toni Maticevski’s costumes for Variation 10 don’t flatter the men but you can’t have everything. His earlier work for Simple Symphony and Les illuminations is just right.

Triptych ends in Sydney on October 10. It will be seen in Germany at Theatre im Pfalzbau, Festpiele Ludwigshafen, on November 28 and 29, featuring the German State Philharmonic of Rhineland-Palatinate.

In Melbourne on October 25 Les Illuminations, featuring Taryn Fiebig, will be performed with Variation 10 and Project Rameau, accompanied by the Australian Chamber Orchestra, for a program titled Illuminated. Illuminated will then be performed in Hong Kong on November 13 and 14.

Variation 10 will be performed with 2 One Another at Stadtheater Fürth, Germany, November 18-22.