Stephanie Lake has legs

Stephanie Lake Company has an enormous 2024, with national and international touring and other exciting programming initiatives ahead.

Manifesto, which premiered in 2022 and has been seen in Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and twice in Melbourne, is continuing its extremely successful run. Featuring nine dancers and nine drummers on nine drum kits, the show is travelling to Teatro del Canal, Madrid (May 23-26) and then to La Comète-Scène Nationale de Châlons-en-Champagne, France (May 29-30). It was recently seen at the Auckland Arts Festival (March 8-10).

Another of Lake's successful creations is Colossus. It has a clever touring model in that it engages 45 – 65 high-level dance students or company members in each place it is performed, coached to performance standard by just six SLC representatives. Since its creation in 2019, the show has been staged in 13 venues here and overseas. In 2024 it will be seen for the first time in Brisbane as part of Ohm Festival with 50 dancers from the Queensland Ballet and Queensland University of Technology (April 17-20). It then goes to Korea's Seoul Performing Arts Festival at Arko Theatre in October. Now that gives added meaning to a show with legs!

Lake begins her first year as Resident Choreographer of the Australian Ballet with Circle Electric, at the Sydney Opera House (May 3-18) and then at Melbourne's Regent Theatre (October 2-9). 

Throughout the year, the company will continue creating a new work for 12 dancers and community choirs titled The Chronicles, ready to premiere and tour in early 2025. It will also present the second season of ESCALATOR in Melbourne following the success of the inaugural season in 2023. ESCALATOR is a season of commissioned works by five emerging choreographers.

At the start of the year the choreographer herself danced in Soliloquy, a piece created for the Sydney Festival by recorder virtuoso Genevieve Lacey and Gideon Obarzanek and employing 32 untrained dance participants.