Piran Scott and Naiara de Matos are professional dancers with Sydney Dance Company. They're also married. And they say dancing together makes them better — not worse.

"A lot of people ask us, 'How do you work with your partner? I couldn't do it!'" de Matos says with a laugh. "It's funny because it's been the best thing for us," Scott replies. "We dance better when we dance together … that's our best version."

The couple met in the early 2010s in Leipzig, Germany. They were barely in their twenties, fresh out of dance school, and newly signed to the opera house's resident ballet company. Scott was a tall, goofy redhead from Mackay, Queensland. De Matos was a striking Brazilian dancer. They were part of a tight-knit crew that included Spanish dancer Fran Díaz — now an internationally recognised choreographer.

Life back then revolved around the opera house. "It's like in sport," de Matos says, "it was our home ground." After shows, the whole company would converge on the canteen to socialise and drink late into the night. Scott loved the buzz so much he eventually moved to a flat across the road.

Díaz, now choreographer of The Mass Ornament — which gets its Australian premiere in Sydney Dance Company's upcoming Engine season — was already showing signs of creative restlessness. De Matos remembers him in rehearsal with a jacket tied around his waist, pockets full of spare change. "We'd be rehearsing and feeling all this stress, trying to learn the steps, and then these coins would start flying around the space!" Even then, she says, "you could tell he had the ability [to choreograph]."

Díaz eventually moved to Berlin to choreograph. Scott and de Matos married and settled in Sydney, joining SDC four years ago. Now the trio are reuniting in Sydney for the Engine triple bill at the Sydney Opera House from June 24 to July 12.

Scott and de Matos are often asked how they cope with working together. They insist they've never fought in rehearsals. At first, de Matos admits, they were more direct and harsh with each other than with colleagues, but they quickly learned to soften their language and give each other space at work.

Ultimately, Scott says, the deep trust of their marriage lets them take bigger on-stage risks — the high-octane lifts, spinning throws, running leaps and lurches of weight that require one body to completely trust another. "You can just push a little bit further … things are more instinctive, which is a beautiful thing."

After hours, they talk less about dance technique and more about emotional challenges. "There's always that moment at home where we can debrief together," says de Matos. "Like, if you're trying to dance through an injury … Or one of us will say, 'I'm not feeling very creative at the moment.'"

Their shared understanding also helps them plan for life after dance. Elite dance careers are notoriously short, like professional sport. Scott is studying education; de Matos is exploring dancer advocacy. "We both understand how much we've devoted our whole lives to this career," de Matos says. "So we can have those conversations – cry about it, laugh about it, make plans – and say: 'let's imagine what the future could look like.'"

Now they mentor young SDC dancers — so much so that the younger dancers teasingly call them "Mum and Dad."

Díaz says the dance world is small. "Quite often, when you leave a place, you have a feeling that your paths might cross again somewhere else. It's really beautiful when that happens."

In what Díaz calls "a different constellation," they are finding each other again in Sydney — not just as the partying friends of youth, but as mature, accomplished artists.