To introduce the dance-curious to the breadth and depth of Australian dance, the two-week Melbourne festival Dance X is presenting two programs as stuffed as they are various. Under the auspices of the Australian Ballet and the curation of its artistic director, David Hallberg—a beloved and beguilingly strange dancer at American Ballet Theatre before he slipped down under—Dance X stretches far beyond Melbourne and the company’s classical base while still making room for the big names on the national scene. The Royal New Zealand Ballet brings Maori choreographer Moss Te Ururangi Patterson’s stylization of the haka, a battle cry with which New Zealand’s famous rugby team starts every game. The Australian Ballet performs not only Balanchine’s betutued Allegro Brillante but also the renowned postmodernist Lucy Guerin’s Ground Control, about the opposite of flight. As for Country—what indigenous Australians call the vast terrain that has dreamed them for some 50,000 years—the indigenous-led Bangarra Dance Theatre evokes the incursion of the transcontinental railroad on sacred land in the heavily atmospheric Yuldea, the inaugural work of the globe-trotting company’s new director, Frances Ring. Finally, do not miss DanceNorth. Spunky, funky, and unassuming, the Queensland troupe is preternaturally attuned to the communal Gen-Z spirit in dance right now. Besides the two mainstage programs—one per week—the festival offers smaller, more experimental pieces under separate cover. —Apollinaire Scherr