Let your imagination flourish under the cover of dark. Light, music, food, ice and art is blooming in our fertile night garden.

Afrocentric rap, hip hop and neo-soul from the current crop of Australian greats.

Art, empire, identity and spirituality overlap in Chinatown. Reach the roof and raise a glass.

An epic, 250-year fight to return home the captive bodily remains of First Peoples.

A master storyteller shifts her work from film to stage to share a morality tale for our times—in which she just happens to be the central character.

Crossing genres and continents, the visionary rapper returns to Melbourne for two huge shows to open RISING.

The perfect work/life balance exists. 8 hours rest, 8 hours play, 8 hours of absurd corporate hell.

Hip hop iconoclast Shabazz Palaces is joined by the most special of the special, Stas THEE Boss in this Australian exclusive.

Gender expression from Indonesia’s Sulawesi island is explored in contemporary choreography that informs the present.

Effortless grooves, crisp snares and rhythmic experiments from two rising stars of R&B.

Anything & Everything delves into online and IRL spaces, where young people navigate identity, connection and intimacy.

Identity, humour and Bible camp come to a head for a night of bracing, honest indie-pop.

Precious cultural belongings are called home through song. Accompanied by a string quartet, First Peoples collaborators sing in multiple languages.

Theatrical waves of rhythm invoked by a maestro of Japanese percussion. Transcendent solo performance beyond comparison.

Spend a night with a grand dame and dilettante of death. A stirring solo performance celebrating the wisdom of female elders.

A 20-year wait comes to a close. The disco crooner makes his Australian debut.

A powerful and provocative new dance work challenging Australia's fixation with incarceration.

A powerful laser beam, almost a kilometre long, burns above the Birrarung (Yarra River).

An invisible theatre of surveillance, private enterprise and city activation comes to life in our town square.

Vintage synths and impeccable groove. Harvey Sutherland’s new live ensemble dismantle and reconfigure Elisabeth Murdoch Hall into a heaving, surreal club.

A mesmerising symphony of light, sound and joy, staged in a breathtaking mirror maze.

Nine dancers. Nine drummers. Manifesto is performance stripped back to its bare elements—rhythm and movement, drumming and dancing.

Domination, submission and observation. A one-woman power play confronting pornography’s pervasive creep.

Two titans of the Australian underground together again.

Originators and descendants of Tokyo’s Shibuya-kei scene. Punk attitude with a techno pulse.

Divine geometry subverted by wonkiness. The search for idealism in art is upended by a dance of exquisite chaos.

A performance 20 years in the making. Icons of post-rock and Cretan tradition together on stage.

Seventy people, from different age groups and backgrounds, create a critical mass of collective action.

In her Australian debut, orchestral electronic artist Ana Roxanne sets out on the search for something greater.

Farts happen!

Queer intimacy and fantasy meet 1950s pulp fiction in a genre-bending technical feat of screen and stage.

A baptism of bass, colossal speaker stacks and cross-continental music culture. Feel The Forum shake.

Hard truths, humour and heartfelt song told in a commanding performance. A story of childhood trauma, and of raising young Blak men.

As part of the Japan in Focus music program, legendary doom trio Boris power through their 2002 classic Heavy Rocks.

From Melbourne's day party denizens comes a finale befitting RISING's debut run.

Dynamic soul and R&B from Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Spend a night soaking in the prophetic post-punk of two Australian acts at the top of their game.

Community rituals and compulsive dancing link times of crisis. Can you resist the rave?

Shimmering astronauts, phosphorescent stars and vast feminist galaxies.

Let the cinematic missives of skillful multi-instrumentalist Andy Shauf wash over you in his Australian debut performance.

In a RISING exclusive, the singular electronic producer will draw you in deep.

Vanity, beauty, nihilism and sensuality collide with cutting edge tech. Oscar Wilde’s gothic classic, reimagined for the 21st Century.

Surrender to the rhythm with one of the breakout players of the South London jazz scene.

Leave your expectation at the door for a night of avant-garde improvised music.

Fluid drumming and guitar improvisation from two master musicians.

Groundbreaking.

Outsider pop on its own wavelength, from an artist born between two worlds. Reject the binary, embrace multiplicity.

With echoes of Antiques Roadshow and internet unboxing videos, ordinary people’s poignant histories and curious collections reveal that behind the common, lies the profound.

Radical interventions of fire, water and life transform an iconic instrument.

Expressions of identity on the move. Six First Peoples-designed trams roll out across the city.

The hallowed turf of the MCG replaced with the Great Hall of the NGV. Suspended above—footballers, bound in ropes, recreating a momentous mark, frozen in time.

Precious cultural belongings are called home through song. Accompanied by a string quartet, First Peoples collaborators sing in multiple languages.

A chance for young art fans to meet acclaimed artist Patricia Piccinini and create their own artworks.

Music and dance strike a balance between perpetual motion and perpetual stasis.

Chinatown condensed. Your one-stop shop for the best snacks on the strip.