Carriageworks, Sydney, December 9.

SOMETIMES it’s about getting experience, sometimes it’s about getting the kind of exposure that can really pay dividends. Sydney Dance Company’s New Breed program introduces audiences to choreographers who are either completely new to the game or who still fly somewhat under the radar. Last year, for instance, New Breed included a work by Gabrielle Nankivell called Wildebeest that has been scheduled as part of SDC’s 2016 program. Nankivell was by no means untried as a choreographer but this got her wider, well-deserved recognition.

I hope I’m not jumping the gun here but this year’s equivalent is Kristina Chan. The much-admired independent dancer has a clutch of small-scale choreographies to her credit but with Conform takes a big step forward. It wouldn’t surprise me to see this work or a development of it turning up in a SDC program in the near future.

“I am interested in what it means to be a man in this modern day,” writes Chan in the program note to Conform. She has a sombre view. When we first see her men – there is an all-male cast of eight – they visibly buckle under the weight of expectation. They are either desperately alone with their thoughts or they fall in with the majority, losing individuality but absorbing the power of the pack. It’s not particularly safe to be outside the group nor is there easy rapport with another individual.

Conform is beautifully structured, vibrates with repressed emotion and has a very strong, pulsating and often ominous score by James Brown. This one is a keeper.

Bernhard Knauer’s Derived also has a terrific score, written by his father, Jürgen. Knauer’s piece is only eight minutes in length but has a distinctive, elegant voice. The movement is thick, weighty and juicy all at once, answering the dark sonorities of the music. The dancers, two women and two men, are supremely confident individuals, whether alone or with the others. Derived is a highly polished miniature.

Fiona Jopp’s So Much, Doesn’t Matter is her first work, a piece inspired by various iterations of the song Greensleeves and the implications of its lyrics. Jopp throws slapstick comedy, children’s games, medieval masque and more into the mix and it unfortunately makes little sense although Jopp’s verve and ambition are admirable.

Daniel Riley’s Reign puts a beleaguered queen at the mercy of a faceless pack of women determined to bring her down. The ferocious energy of the dancers makes Reign a perfectly agreeable quarter of an hour but it fades quickly from view.