The Flaming Lips Free Set Leads Sydney Festival 2016 Line-Up

Sydney Festival have dropped their full 40th anniversary line-up, leading with Summer Sounds In The Domain featuring The Flaming Lips on 9 January.

The full program follows their Parramatta announcement earlier this week, and the announcement of the first two theatre productions on the program, Desdemona and Wozyeck in August.

The rest of the line-up spans music, theatre, dance, film, circus, cabaret, comedy, visual art and more.

The music line-up includes Joanna Newsom; Girlpool; Dirty Three; Kate Tempest; the Mexican Morrissey, Mexrrissey; Arthur Russell's Instrumentals, featuring Peter Gordon, Ernie Brooks and Rhys Chatham; Matthew E White; DaM-FunK; Flying Nun's The Chills; Dreamland featuring Jack Ladder, Kirin J Callinan, Donny Benet and Laurence Pike; The Apartments; folk music at St Stephen's Uniting Church, featuring Michael Hurley and more; a rich classical and opera line-up; modern jazz from Stu Hunter; The Weather Station; Reykjavik Calling; Hailu Mergia; Jenny Hall; The Blackeyed Susans; Kev Carmody; Tiwi Strong Women's Group; Ryley Walker; Outernational!; Black Coffee; and The Cambodian Space Project.

Heading the theatre program is The Rabbits, fresh from seasons at Melbourne and Perth Festivals, an opera featuring a libretto by the award-winning playwright Lally Katz, and composition from star Kate MIller-Heidke. The rest of the program inclues one-man show The Object Lesson from Geoff Sobelle, which received accolades at Edinburgh Fringe; All The Sex I've Ever Had, where a group of Sydney over-65s talk candidly about their romantic and sex lives; Christopher Brett Bailey's beat-theatre, This Is How We Die; and Japanese absurdists Okazaki Art Theatre performing +51 Avaiacion, San Borja.

Miller-Heidke also features in the creation of The Book Of Sand, an interactive song cycle inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' stories, which is available now for free on Android, Windows and Desktop.

The dance program features two Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker works, Vortex Temporum, and Fase: Four Movements To The Music Of Steve Reich; Indgenous dance group formerly known as The Chooky Dancers, Djuki Mala; as well as Perth Festival standout Cut The Sky, which features music from Nick Cave and Ngaiire.

The circus program features the already announced La Verita and Knee Deep, from Brisbane group Casus Circus. The cabaret line-up includes Alan Cumming; and Meow Meow's Little Mermaid, which will then make its way to Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne. The comedy line-up features The Invisible Dot Cabaret, led by host Skins' Josie Long, who was in Australia for MICF earlier this year.

In the film stakes, Spear, which was announced as part of BAPFF last week, is the on-screen adaptation of Stephen Page and Bangarra Dance Theatre's dance work, while a Birdman screening and live film score from jazz improviser and composer Antonio Sanchez will come to Sydney from MOFO.

The standout on the visual art program is 40 Portraits by Eva Vermandel, a public exhibition of 40 Sydney Festival faces, across bus stops in the CBD and at UNSW Galleries, including high profile artists like David Byrne, and the staff, volunteers and audience members of the Festival.

Two large cardboard installations from France's Olivier Grossetete will take over Darling Harbour and new cultural space The Cutaway at Barangaroo Reserve, The People's Tower and The Ephemeral City.

Sydney Festival runs from 7-26 January 2016.

For more information, or to purchase tickets, head to the Sydney Festival website.