Last week ArtsHub tipped its hat to the visual arts organisations that were celebrating major anniversaries in 2025, paying a nod for them tirelessly delivered their artistic programming, and continuing to do so.
In this second wave, we take a look at the performing arts companies and festivals that are also celebrating milestones in 2025.
Celebrating anniversaries:
150 years for Her Majesty’s Theatre Ballarat
Her Majesty’s has been a central part of the cultural life of Ballarat, in regional Victoria, since it opened its doors in 1875. Considered Australia’s best-preserved theatre building, it has been continuously used as Ballarat’s home of live performance for 150-years.
The Theatre has been owned and operated by the City of Ballarat since 1987. “It was originally known as the Academy of Music, and was built by the wealthy Clarke family at the initiative of a group of local people who felt that Ballarat, as the premier city of the Victorian goldfields, should have a theatre worthy of its status. They guaranteed to rent it from the Clarkes at 10% of the construction cost, which was £13,000,” explains the Theatre’s website. It opened 7 June 1875 with the comic opera by the French composer Charles Lecocq, La Fille de Madame Angot, its inaugural performance.
To kick off the celebrations, ‘Her Maj’ handed over the keys to locals this past weekend (1 February) in a celebration of performance and community – the pillars that have shaped this milestone journey.
La Boite Theatre 100th anniversary
Australia’s longest continuously running theatre company, La Boite was established in 1925 as an amateur company by co-founders Barbara Sisley, an English-born actor and voice teacher, and Professor J J Stable, Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Queensland.
Originally known as Brisbane Repertory Theatre, the company changed its name to La Boite (from the French for ‘the box’) in 1967. It moved into a purpose-built home in 1972, and since 2003 has been based at the Roundhouse Theatre at Queensland University of Technology’s Creative Industries Precinct in Kelvin Grove.
To celebrate this incredible history, La Boite Theatre has programmed four mainstage productions and a 10-part play-reading series celebrating past productions. In an earlier interview Artistic Director Courtney Stewart told ArtsHub: “I keep returning to a quote I read in Christine Comans’ book, La Boite: The Story of an Australian Theatre Company, which recounted the ethos on which the company was founded. “It was about presenting serious drama and aspiring to cultural awareness, social improvement, discussing moral and spiritual values and collective responsibility” and it’s become a guiding light. “It’s what La Boite’s founders were trying to do 100 years ago and it’s what we’re still striving to achieve – how do we set ourselves up for another century of legacy?”
Read the full story: La Boite Theatre celebrates 100 years of Queensland stories in 2025
Canberra Theatre Centre’s Diamond Anniversary
Canberra Theatre Centre will celebrate its 60th anniversary in 2025. It first opened its doors in June 1965, making it Australia’s first performing arts centre – yes, ahead of Adelaide Festival Centre (1973), Sydney Opera House (1973), Arts Centre Melbourne (1984), Queensland Performing Arts Centre (1985) and Darwin Entertainment Centre (1986).
That inaugural performance was by The Australian Ballet, and the company will return to perform in Canberra for this milestone, with Swedish choreographer Johan Inger’s award-winning production of Carmen.
“We are thrilled to welcome back The Australian Ballet, 60 years to the day that they opened the Canberra Theatre Centre to great fanfare in 1965. I am so delighted that the company will bring Carmen to our theatre – it is a work that genuinely celebrates the great traditions of ballet, while simultaneously helping us boldly imagine the next 60 years of our future,” says Alex Budd, Director, Canberra Theatre Centre.
50th season of the Australian Chamber Orchestra
“In 1975, visionary Australian cellist, John Painter, gathered an ensemble of like-minded string players who shared his dream of creating a group where they could control their musical destinies. This ensemble, boldly named the Australian Chamber Orchestra, made its debut that November in Sydney Opera House, performing to a sold-out Concert Hall,” explains Artistic Director Richard Tognetti. “I have always felt that the ACO has the most curious and engaged audiences in the world and, as we approach our 50th anniversary year, that is truer than ever.”
While Tognetti calls out this incredible company, 2025 also marks his 35th year as the ACO’s pioneering Artistic Director, and 20 years of the ACO’s Emerging Artist Program.
The ACO has built its reputation on invention, curiosity and unforgettable music-making, often intrepid, as it has travelled to connect with audiences from remote rural areas to global stages. The company adds: “Since its inception 50 years ago, the ACO has playfully, but pointedly, disrupted expectations of what an orchestra, and an orchestral experience, can be.”
For the ACO’s 50th anniversary, the Orchestra unveils a new brand and new logo, designed by its long-term creative partner Moffitt.Moffitt. and its website has a nice page of reflections by ACO musicians.
DreamBIG Children’s Festival celebrates 50 years
DreamBIG Children’s Festival returns to Adelaide Festival Centre this May, with a theme inspired by its 50th year, ‘I Was, I Am, I Will Be’. Described as “the world’s longest running curated children’s festival”, its anniversary program will feature more than 70 shows and exhibitions of storytelling, interactive play and music across 10 days. Among them will be nine world premieres and 12 South Australian premieres.
The DreamBIG’s Birthday Parade will be held on 7 May, kicking off the Festival. DreamBIG has created a timeline of its history on its website.
Sydney Chamber Choir turns 50
One of Australia’s premier choral ensembles, Sydney Chamber Choir is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2025, with international collaborations, a European tour, five huge concerts – including two in Sydney’s magnificent City Recital Hall – and the world premieres of five newly commissioned Australian works.
Formed in 1975, the company has worked with guest conductors, such as Carl Crossin, Roland Peelman, Elizabeth Scott and Brett Weymark, as well as our three previous directors, Nicholas Routley, Paul Stanhope and the late Richard Gill AO.
“We love to travel deep inside the music to meet the composers and bring their vision alive in sound,” explains the Choir’s website. “We reach back to explore the masterpieces of the Baroque and the Renaissance, while also championing the music of our own time and place, regularly commissioning works by established and emerging Australian composers.”
Artistic Director Sam Allchurch says of this year’s celebration program: “The Sydney Chamber Choir’s highly significant contribution to Australian culture over 50 years is truly something worth revelling in!”
The 50th Anniversary Gala will be presented 5 July, at City Recital Hall (Sydney) and feature especially commissioned works from five of Australia’s most exciting compositional talents: Luke Byrne, Anne Cawrse, Meta Cohen, Nardi Simpson and Paul Stanhope. The Gala will coincide with the launch of the Choir’s important recording of the Stanhope Requiem, which was the winner of the APRA 2022 Art Music Award for Work of the Year: Choral.
Over the years, the company has performed at Adelaide Chamber Music Festival, Canberra International Music Festival, Sydney Festival and internationally in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the UK. In 2009 the Choir was a prize-winner in the Tolosa International Choral Competition in Spain.
In this special anniversary season, the Choir will present concerts in Berlin, Hannover and Leipzig (Germany).
Parrtjima celebrates its 10th anniversary
In April this year, Parrtjima: A Festival in Light, will return to the red desert of Central Australia to mark its 10th edition. The theme for this milestone edition is ‘Timelessness’, celebrating the enduring connection and wisdom shared between generations through music, song and oral storytelling.
Rhoda Roberts AO, Parrtjima Curator, says of the theme: “More than ever, we all need to experience Parrtjima, as the Festival continues to shine new light on age-old traditions and fresh expressions. It echoes the urgent need to honour the legacy of culture and the stories that connect us all across time.”
It has created a unique brand in the crowded light festival calendar, showcasing the oldest continuous culture on earth through the newest technology – all on the 300-million-year-old natural canvas of the MacDonnell Ranges in Central Australia. Since its inception, the Festival has expanded to include workshops, performances and more.
In a first, to celebrate the Festival’s anniversary, Parrtjima will present an open-air orchestral performance starring the Darwin Symphony Orchestra, alongside celebrated Central Australian desert divas Catherine Satour, Casii Williams and Bronwyn Stuart. Join the party at Alice Springs Desert Park, Mparntwe/Alice Springs, from 4-13 April.
Read: Parrtjima to return with a timeless glow in April
Tarnanthi growing connections for a decade
2025 marks 10 years of Tarnanthi – the Art Gallery of SA’s festival of contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art. Pronounced tar-nan-dee, from the language of the Kaurna people, the Traditional Owners of the Adelaide Plains, the festival aims to share important stories through artistic excellence, illuminating the diversity and depth of art and culture in communities nationwide.
Over 6000 artists have been included in the exhibitions and the art fairs, and over 48,000 students and teachers have been welcomed into learning about and understanding First Nations cultures through Tarnanthi.
Inaugural Curator, Barkandji artist, curator, writer and educator, Nici Cumpston has shepherded the event. In an earlier interview she told ArtsHub: “We have a long way to go to break down the stereotypes of what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island art is, and sometimes people need to just happen upon things to learn in their own time.’”
Cumpston believes that this is where legacy comes in, and that slow year-on-year build of a conversation. First, the mining giant BHP came to the table to secure the festival for five years with $17.54 million. In October 2021, it committed to another three years of support in the delivery of the festival.
Read: How a festival’s legacy shifts perception
Cumpston added: “Part of the legacy of Tarnanthi is that we can acquire [artworks] into the collection, especially if we have the long lead time to build into the acquisition strategy, so we can continue to tell that story through our education resources. It is not necessarily [just] about art, but ongoing learning and understanding of systems – maps, science, geology, geography, weather – that invest in that building our future.”
This year’s exhibition Too Deadly: Ten Years of Tarnanthi, will be presented from 17 October to 18 January 2026.
If your arts organisation is celebrating a major anniversary this year, reach out to us at ArtsHub at [email protected].
