Dripping with sensuality, The Navigator is a highly charged, emotional work about desire and the journey towards connection and transformation. Director Barrie Kosky brings this provocative opera to life for the stage. Through a complex play of light and costume a world of echoes is created, one that is in juxtaposition with the searing music gloriously performed by The ELISION Ensemble.

Kitten's rollercoaster journey from the depths of despair to soaring hope makes for theatre at its most powerful. Love, grief, transformation and yearning manifest without as well as within. Bewitching and unsettling, Kitten is a three-act tale that is at once psychiatric fable, lyrical puzzle and metaphysical love song performed by an outstanding cast.

On the back of an enormously successful international tour with small metal objects one of Australia's most exciting companies returns to Melbourne Festival with the world premiere of an anticipated new work. Part concert, part theatre show, Food Court features the idiosyncratic vision of Back to Back Theatre and the music of The Necks, who improvise a driving score for each performance.

Two of Australia's foremost musical forces come together for an historic event that celebrates songs of tradition that are rooted in hope and resistance from the open heart of Australia's contemporary Indigenous music. Hidden Republic reveals the undiminished spirit in the music of Aboriginal Australia and songs which celebrate identity and understanding for all Australians.

Combining original live music from acclaimed female vocalist New Buffalo; incisive text from award-winning playwright Ross Mueller; and featuring a fusion of dance, theatre and visual design - Appetite promises to be a literal feast.

One of Australia's most innovative dance companies moves through the confines of physical and psychological space in a highly anticipated, intelligent new work.

Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham team up with long time collaborator Trevor Patrick and Nick Sommerville in this corporeal evocation of the mind's eye. Stripped back to movement, light and design essentials, Sunstruck exists in a landscape of isolation, absence and the dislocating slippage of memory, reality and the imagination.

Bring the kids to this giant-sized game of life and plunge into a brilliantly fun, oversized adventure. Who will win? The Big Game is a gigantic, fun, interactive performance and play space for families. Kids participate as tokens in a huge board game, rolling enormous dice, stepping on game tiles and meeting larger-than-life characters that take them from start to finish.

The Meaning of Moorabbin is Open For Inspection is staged as an open inspection. Using photography, film, video and design, this is an extraordinary theatre and installation work that plays with Australian notions of family and suburbia.

The company behind the groundbreaking 2007 Festival work Glow returns with a bold new dance-theatre work that gives a rare glimpse into the performers' world and takes the audience backstage. Melbourne's leading contemporary dance company Chunky Move has earned an enviable reputation for producing a distinct yet unpredictable brand of genre-defying dance performances and Two Faced Bastard promises to be another truly extraordinary experience.