Sydney Dance Company opened its latest season with Continuum, a triple bill that reminds audiences why the ensemble remains Australia’s most compelling cultural export. Receiving a standing ovation at its premiere last night at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, the program unfolds as an elegant meditation on movement and metamorphosis—three distinct choreographic visions held together by Rafael Bonachela’s curatorial precision and instinct for contrast.

Stephen Page’s Unungkati Yantatja – one with the other breathes land, sea, and sky into motion; Tra Mi Dinh’s Somewhere between ten and fourteen lingers in the tender light between day and night; and Bonachela’s own world-premiere Spell delivers the evening’s visceral heartbeat. Together they trace the continuum of life itself—fluid, volatile, and impossible to pin down. Running through 1 November, the production affirms Bonachela’s vision of dance as “an ever-evolving conversation between artists, audiences, and the world around them.” Robb Report ANZ recently caught up with Bonachela.

Continuum is described as “a bold exploration of the ever-shifting cadence that binds us to the world.” How did this idea of constant transformation influence your choreographic choices in Continuum? 

I’ve curated this evening as an invitation for audiences to experience dance as an ever-evolving conversation—between past and present, between the individual and the collective, and between diverse artistic voices. My intention with this program is to spark connection, curiosity, and reflection, offering works that challenge, move, and inspire while revealing the transformative power of the body in motion.

Each choreographer brings a distinct perspective, yet all share a commitment to exploring the body in motion as a vessel for transformation. Through contrasting aesthetics, cultural resonances, and shifts in time, these works reveal how dance exists on a continuum—where moments build upon one another, find new meanings in fresh contexts, and affirm the enduring power of the human form to express what words cannot.

You’ve created the world premiere Spell within Continuum, which explores “the limits of emotional and physical expression.” What did you aim to conjure emotionally and physically through Spell, and how does it dialogue with the other works in the triple bill?

The title Spell itself suggests a duality—it can be something magical, but also something we fall under without even realising. Emotionally, I want to evoke an atmosphere that is at once intimate and volatile, where vulnerability and power exist side by side. There’s a ritualistic quality to the work, as if the dancers are caught inside a force they cannot quite escape—and it’s that tension which drives the movement and fuels the piece.

Within Continuum, Spell emerges as an intense, visceral heart—both contrasting with and speaking to the other works. While it shares the evening’s theme of transformation, it explores it through a lens of emotional ignition and fearless physicality.

In crafting Continuum, how did you balance moments of intimacy and expansiveness—especially when layering live elements like music and immersive lighting—to evoke that ebb and flow of life’s narratives? 

In Continuum, each choreographer works with complete artistic freedom, without any direction from me. That independence brings out authentic contrasts and unexpected connections between the works. It’s this variety that invites audiences to engage on their own terms, discovering personal meanings and emotional threads that are unique to each viewer.

This triple bill seems to offer a journey through time and place—from twilight’s fleeting beauty to elemental breath. How do you want audiences to experience—and perhaps rethink—the relationship between movement, nature, and storytelling?

I always want audiences to come with an open mind and allow the experience to be unprescribed free to discover their own meanings and narratives. Dance has the unique power to be felt as much as it is seen, to resonate physically and emotionally in ways words can’t. I hope audiences leave with a renewed sense of how deeply movement is connected to the natural world, and how it can tell stories without language. Like nature, this evening is always in motion—emerging, transforming, and fading—so that each work becomes a landscape the audience can journey through, sensing their own place in the continuum of life

Looking ahead, does Continuum carve out a new direction or personal milestone for your artistic trajectory? What might this signal for your future choreographic explorations?

Continuum feels like both a culmination and a starting point. It gathers threads from my past work, my fascination with transformation, my love of collaboration, my search for emotional truth and weaves them into something that opens new doors.

Creating and curating this triple bill has changed how I see works interacting—how contrasting voices can strengthen shared themes. It’s inspired me to explore even more fluid boundaries between ideas, styles, and disciplines.

If it signals anything for the future, it’s that I’m interested in going further into that space where dance is not just movement, but an ongoing conversation—between artists, between forms, and between audiences and the world around them.

Continuum runs through November 1 at the Roslyn Packer Theatre. 

If you want to know what the latest obsession is these days among the ultra-wealthy, listen in at dinner.

Once it was crypto, then came AI and psychedelics, now it’s longevity all the time. The talk is of biomarkers, NAD+ levels, and methylation clocks, of senolytics and stem cells. Guests compare blood panels like wine lists, and the most important name to drop is no longer your banker or contact at Rolex but your longevity physician. For those just arriving at the conversation, the new science can sound like science fiction—but it’s fast becoming the lingua franca of money.

The field has its own vocabulary—epigenetic reprogramming, which aims to reset cellular clocks; cellular senescence clearance, the removal of “zombie” cells that clog our systems as we age; precision gene therapies, designed to personalise interventions at the level of DNA—that sounds equal parts Brave New World and Wall Street pitch deck. But make no mistake: this is no longer a niche pursuit. The sector is already worth an estimated $30 billion globally and projected to surpass $120 billion within the decade, having attracted billions in investment from the likes of Altos Labs, Juvenescence and Google-backed Calico. Tech titans and old-money families alike are staking claims on the possibility of an extra decade or two. It’s a space where venture funds court Nobel laureates, hedge funds bankroll gene-therapy moonshots, and even wellness festivals in Australia draw rock-star scientists to the stage.

The Poster Child and the Pitch

David Sinclair, the Sydney-born Harvard geneticist who has become something of a poster child for the field, is quick to underline the stakes. “We’re not just talking about lifespan, we’re talking about health span,” he tells Robb Report. “Extending the number of years people live well—without frailty, without disease—isn’t just a medical breakthrough. It’s a social and economic one.” Sinclair, whose research ranges from NAD boosters to epigenetic age-reversal therapies, has calculated that adding a single year of healthy life to the US population, for example, could be worth $38 trillion in economic benefit—fewer years of costly aged care, less burden on hospitals, more years of productivity and compounding returns. In other words, the dividends of health are financial as well as personal. “That’s why governments and investors are paying attention,” he says.

Sinclair has become a fixture on the global circuit, drawing crowds that rival TED or Davos. As Radek Sali, the Australian entrepreneur behind the new Wanderlust Wellspring longevity festival taking place on the Gold Coast this October, where Sinclair is the keynote speaker, puts it: “Wellness has moved into the realm of entertainment.” At Wellspring, platinum-tier guests pay up to nearly $2,000 for the privilege of hearing scientists and investors share the stage over a weekend like headliners at Coachella.

Investing in Time

And then there are the sideshows. Bryan Johnson, the tech mogul turned human guinea pig, makes headlines with his open-source, organ-by-organ data tracking—his infamous “penis readings” have become cocktail-party fodder. While many dismiss him as a parody of the field, his multimillion-dollar project Blueprint has nevertheless made longevity impossible to ignore in the mainstream.

For the uninitiated, the science of longevity today is no longer about vitamin salesmen or fringe dietary regimes. This is the new frontier—one where biology is not just observed but engineered, and where investors smell opportunity on par with space travel. It’s little wonder that Altos Labs has raised billions to chase cellular rejuvenation, or that Juvenescence has secured more than $400 million to fast-track therapies. What was once the realm of eccentric tinkerers now attracts sovereign wealth funds.

“This body takes me to meetings, earns me money—why not invest time and money into it?”

The appeal to the One Percent is obvious. Longevity is a natural extension of portfolio thinking: diversify your assets, hedge your risks, and above all, maximise return on investment. Except in this case, the returns are measured in years of health, energy and cognition. As Andrew Banks, a Sydney-based entrepreneur and early investor in Juvenescence, explains: “This body takes me to meetings, earns me money—why not invest time and money into it?” His Point Piper home teems with contraptions—a Reoxy breathing machine, hydrogen therapy, red-light sauna, and he spends a few hours a day on maintenance, as if his body were a private equity stake.

Banks, like others in his cohort, is baffled that more wealthy men haven’t followed suit. “Entrepreneurs pride themselves on divergent thinking,” he says. “They expand, dream and create businesses with it. But when it comes to their bodies, they’re convergent—unimaginative. The lack of curiosity is astonishing to me.”

Medicine 3.0 and the New Rituals

Steve Grace, a Sydney-based entrepreneur and the proprietor of exclusive private networking club The Pillars, which is opening a longevity program, thinks there is a reckoning coming for those who do not take matters into their own hands. “As someone who has run a few recruitment businesses,” he says, “I can tell you that if you’re a man or woman in your 50s and working as an employee, even in a really good position, it’s time to get worried about job security and being aged out of the workforce. You have to make yourself as vital as possible and become the best version of yourself, or you’re toast.”

What was once fringe has now become a cultural necessity for those who can afford anything, with science finally catching up to ambition. Sinclair’s lab at Harvard recently published a study on the reversibility of cellular ageing—restoring vision in blind mice and setting the stage for human trials in conditions like glaucoma. In Boston, his company Life Biosciences will begin treating patients with blindness in a Phase I trial using partial cellular reprogramming early next year. “This isn’t science fiction anymore,” Sinclair says. “We’re at the point where we can reprogram cells, turn back their biological clocks, and restore function.”

Meanwhile, practitioners like Dr. Adam Brown of the Longevity Institute in the Sydney suburb of Double Bay are reinventing diagnostics. His “assessment menu” has been compared—only half-jokingly—to a Michelin Guide for medical testing: full-body MRI scans, continuous glucose monitors, polygenic risk scores. “What we do is proactive, not reactive,” he says. “Correct deficiencies first, then optimise health. That’s how you get peak performance in the short term and resilience in the long term.” Brown frames longevity in terms that would resonate with any investor: “There’s a short-term ROI—fixing glucose or sleep issues so you perform better tomorrow. And there’s a long-term ROI—functioning in your 70s as you would in your 40s. That’s extending your career, your income potential and your independence.”

“Once upon a time, male vanity meant injectables, veneers and a tan. Today, it’s VO2 max scores and continuous glucose monitor readouts.”

 

Peter Attia, the Canadian-American physician and podcast host who has helped popularise the concept of “Medicine 3.0”, echoes this emphasis. Medicine 1.0, according to him, was about surviving infections. Medicine 2.0 was about treating chronic disease. Medicine 3.0 is about staying ahead of decline: measuring, monitoring and intervening early. “The goal is not just to avoid disease but to lengthen health span,” Attia has said.

For those already converted, longevity is less about lab science than daily rituals. Sydney-based Chief Brabon, who trains CEOs like athletes, says: “These men are like Formula One cars—you don’t wait until the tyres are bald before swapping them. You keep everything tuned, precise, optimised.”

That tuning now involves more gadgets than ever: hyperbaric oxygen chambers, cryotherapy, sauna/cold-plunge circuits, peptide stacks, nootropics. And yes, a glut of supplements, some with evidence, others little more than wishful thinking. Once upon a time, male vanity meant injectables, veneers and a tan. Today, it’s VO2 max scores and continuous glucose monitor readouts. “Health is the new flex,” as Steve Grace quipped, glancing at his wrist-worn biometric tracker.

The New Flex: Health as the Ultimate Luxury

Still, there is plenty of scepticism. Some therapies are unproven, others prohibitively expensive. And there is the unavoidable fact that many leading scientists, including Sinclair, have stakes in companies producing supplements and therapeutics, raising eyebrows about conflicts of interest. “The difference,” Sinclair insists, “is whether it’s backed by peer-reviewed science and measurable biomarkers. If it can’t be quantified, it’s marketing, not medicine.”

Then there are the contradictions. It promises democratisation while often priced like a private club. It champions science but thrives on hype. It seeks to extend health span but risks deepening class divides. “Only if we let it,” Sinclair says when asked if longevity risks becoming the preserve of the wealthy. “Like antibiotics or aspirin, these advances should become widely available and affordable once they scale.” Sali agrees, but from another angle: “Biohacking doesn’t have to be expensive,” he says. “The blue zones prove that—community, diet, movement, purpose. Those are free. Wellspring is about making that knowledge accessible.”

And yet, for all its shortcomings, the movement is here to stay. Investment continues to pour in. Technology—like senolytic drugs that clear aged cells or AI-driven platforms that predict individual disease risk years in advance—is moving from speculation to clinical trial. Scientists are being recast as influencers. And the wealthy, always in search of the next advantage, have found in longevity a pursuit as old as alchemy, yet dressed in the language of venture capital. The truth is that health has always been an asset. What’s new is that it’s now being traded, optimised and measured like one.

In the end, longevity is less about a moonshot than about curiosity. Banks, Sali, Sinclair, Attia are all, in their own way, betting on time. Perhaps the most radical idea is also the simplest: that the best-performing asset in any portfolio is the body itself. Unlike Bitcoin, it carries you to meetings. Unlike art, it cannot be stored in a vault. Unlike real estate, it is non-transferable.
The new calculus of longevity is the recognition that the ultimate luxury is not wealth or status, but a few more decades of clear thought, strong bones and good company—and the ability to make money off it. Everything else, as one investor put it, is just a rounding error.

The Regatta Connection

The race village at Port de Saint-Tropez is awash with people in nautical navy and white, the de facto dress code for the Loro Piana Giraglia regatta. This is the second year the fashion house has lent its name to one of the Mediterranean’s most prestigious summer races. The course zooms from the French coast to Genoa, Italy, taking a sharp turn past Giraglia, a small island off Corsica’s northern tip. It’s the latest in a long line of marine events the brand has sponsored, dating back more than 20 years.

The link between sailing and the brand—and more consequentially the Loro Piana family—is exemplified by the man Robb Report is here to meet: Pier Luigi Loro Piana. An avuncular figure in his 70s with the physique of a man who has enjoyed life, Pier Luigi fell in love with sailing in his late teens, when a family friend took him for a cruise in a sloop.

“Using the wind to go faster or slower, driving the boat like it has an engine, it’s really fascinating,” he says. Inevitably, he started competing. “When you’re sailing, you’re always looking for other boats to go and fight with. It’s an instinct,” he says. And then, with considerable understatement, “I think it’s a nice hobby.”

A Life Under Sail

He currently owns two boats: My Song, which you can see on these pages, is a 25 m sailing yacht that competed in the Regatta. There’s also Masquenada, a comfortable 50 m explorer. It’s a commendable set-up befitting a man who shaped one of Europe’s most celebrated fashion houses.

A Family Business Turned Global Powerhouse

The textile and clothing company that bears his family’s name was launched by an ancestor, Pietro Loro Piana, in 1924. A few generations later, Pier Luigi and his brother, Sergio, would run it for four decades until LVMH acquired a majority stake for around $4 billion in 2013. Sergio passed away that year; his widow and Pier Luigi still own a share of the brand between them.

The brothers proved innovative custodians, moving the company upmarket with an insistence on ultra-fine materials and groundbreaking fabrications. And the connection with sports—specifically yachting, horseback riding, skiing and golf—is integral to how the brand positions itself. As Pier Luigi recalls, such associations often had self-serving origins.

“These are the sports my brother and myself were doing,” he says. “We were very committed in business in the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s, so we were like our customers: people that like to work hard but also play hard. And that meant sports.”

Innovation Born of Necessity

This affinity often led them to develop durable, yet elegant, materials and gear for their off-duty pursuits, eventually offering versions to their athletic clientele. “We engineered products with unusual properties, natural fibres like wool or cashmere with a membrane that makes it waterproof and windproof… For research and development, I was the first victim,” he says with a chuckle. Once, he wanted a ski jacket that was “warmer, lighter, softer and better” than nylon models, so he made a prototype to test on the slopes. It gave birth to the Loro Piana Storm System, launched in 1994. The line’s wind-resistant waterproof wool and cashmere has since been used by brands around the world. “I still have this jacket,” he says.

The same process happened on the water. A beloved reversible bomber, with knitted cashmere on one side and waterproof polyester on the other, was born from Pier Luigi’s need for a functional jacket to wear on his yacht. “It’s very light, doesn’t wrinkle, it’s warm, windproof,” he says. “It solves so many problems.”

He takes less credit for perhaps the brand’s most famous—and almost certainly most imitated—product, the white-soled suede Summer Walk loafers. “That was my brother,” he says. “When we were 20, 30 years old, we went sailing and there were only [Sperry] Top-Siders or Sebagos. But when the soles got worn, they got hard and slippery.”

The answer: a non-marking sole with grip—“like a tire you use in Formula 1 when it’s wet”—which Sergio got his bespoke shoemaker to sew to suede uppers. Eventually, they produced two versions: a loafer and the Open Walk, a model with a slightly higher top. “We discovered people were using them also for formal wear because they were so comfortable,” says Pier Luigi. “It’s really a successful story that started from product research.”

And if problem-solving can turn your family business into a giant of global style, clearly it pays to be a little selfish.

In the rarefied realm where leisure meets design, the latest object of desire doesn’t purr down the autostrada—it commands the room from a single sculptural base. The Vici pool table, a collaboration between Italian automotive legend Pininfarina and Miami’s bespoke table-maker Brandt Design Studio, reimagines the game with the same aerodynamic poise and artisanal precision that have graced some of the world’s most beautiful vehicles.

Named for Julius Caesar’s immortal boast—“Veni, vidi, vici”—this limited-edition series transforms billiards from casual diversion into a declaration of style. Every curve is deliberate, from the ultra-thin playing surface clad in tournament-grade Simonis cloth to the seamless integration of Italian nubuck leather and precision-milled metals. The effect is more haute sculpture than barroom pastime—yet it meets exacting professional standards.

For the true connoisseur, the debut PF 95 Anniversario edition celebrates Pininfarina’s 95-year legacy in just 95 numbered pieces. Finished in dark-blue lacquer with rose-gold accents and a flash of red felt, each table is discreetly nameplated—a tangible claim to an heirloom in the making.

“It’s not just about how it plays—it’s about how it lives in a space,” says Dan Brandt, the master craftsman whose work has long graced the world’s most exclusive interiors. Whether anchoring a penthouse salon, a members’ lounge or the main deck of a superyacht, the Vici is designed to stir conversation before the first break.

For those accustomed to Pininfarina’s sleek automotive silhouettes, this is a chance to bring that same lineage of movement, form and Italian refinement into the home. Only now, the horsepower is measured not in engines—but in the geometry of a perfect shot.

From pool to midcentury to Ottoman, we’ve got all the table angles covered at Robb Report Australia & New Zealand —plus more home-worthy pieces.

Building on his partnerships with Morehouse and Spelman colleges, Ralph Lauren now takes us off campus to Oak Bluffs for summer break. A haven for Black communities on Martha’s Vineyard for more than a century, Oak Bluffs’s generations of style and tradition come together in a collection of menswear and womenswear that marries elements of classic collegiate style with coastal leisurewear. “This collection is about more than a charming coastal town; it’s a story of the American dream,” said Ralph Lauren, who called on alumni of the two schools working at Ralph Lauren to conceptualise and design.

As with any story, visuals are key. Lauren enlisted author, director, and producer Cole Brown, who has summered on Martha’s Vineyard for decades, to bring the stories of Oak Bluffs to life. The campaign, which was lensed by photographer Nadine Ijewere and videographer Azariah Bjørvi, both of whom worked on the award-winning Polo Ralph Lauren campaign with Morehouse and Spelman Colleges in 2022. The partnership paid off, with transportive imagery that reads more like a family album than an ad campaign. Anchoring it all is a short documentary that mines archival footage and features the stories of business owners, multi-generational homeowners, and other locals along with Morehouse and Spelman alumni.

“Every piece in this collection tells a story, from quilted souvenir jackets to collegiate crewnecks and cardigans. We’ve captured the spirit of this town—its leisurely summer bike rides, its five-to-seven front porch socials, its nautical traditions—and transformed that into designs that feel as special as the place itself,” David Lauren, the brand’s chief branding and innovation officer, tells Robb Report. The Polo Ralph Lauren for Oak Bluffs collection will be available on RalphLauren.com, the Ralph Lauren app, select Ralph Laure stores, and Morehouse and Spelman College bookstores.

About those front porches: To encourage another century of idyllic, cedar-shingled summers, Ralph Lauren has also partnered with the Cottagers, Inc., a nonprofit of 100 Black female homeowners on Martha’s Vineyard focused on architectural and cultural preservation. The brand is also continuing its partnership with the United Negro College Fund, supporting HBCU scholarships and fostering early talent development and recruitment opportunities.

View the full-length documentary, A Portrait of the American Dream: Oak Bluffs, on YouTube. A special screening and panel discussion will also take place on August 8, 2025 at the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival.