In Stephanie Lake Company’s Manifesto, thundering percussion meets dance
In this DanceHouse and Vancouver New Music copresentation, the Australian performers feed off the energy of nine drum kits on a stylized stage
Manifesto. Photo by Roy VanDerVegt
DanceHouse and Vancouver New Music present Stephanie Lake Company’s Manifesto at the Vancouver Playhouse from April 16 to 18
IT TURNS OUT THE FIRST big challenge of creating a work that features nine drummers, each sitting at their own drum kit, and nine dancers is finding a rehearsal space.
A regular dance rehearsal studio was simply out of the question when Stephanie Lake Company began the process to make the show Manifesto; the wall of sound would instantly draw complaints. And so Melbourne choreographer Stephanie Lake and her partner in life and art, musician and audiovisial artist Robin Fox, finally settled upon a factory-filled industrial area on the edges of the Aussie cultural capital.
“We were rehearsing essentially in a tin shed,” Lake recounts with a good-natured laugh to Stir, just off a gruelling 40-hour flight to Virginia before bringing the drum-driven Manifesto to the Vancouver Playhouse. “Oh my god, it was so loud. It's almost indescribable, the complete immersion. It was so ear-splittingly loud in the most exciting way! You just can't get that kind of impact through playback—well, maybe on the dance floor at a really hardcore techno gig or something like that. That feeling where your body's actually thumping a bit.”
Adding to the creative energy was the fact that the drummers—who rarely get the chance to play with their fellow timekeepers—were eager to build off each other’s beats. Says Lake: “There was an electricity in that as well. They were just getting so buzzed from being in a room full of drum nerds. It was just the best. It just led to such exciting outcomes because the dancers were just so inspired and excited by what was coming out of the instruments.
“Robin wouldn't mind me describing him this way: he says he's a failed heavy metal drummer who became a composer,” she adds of her celebrated partner. “His teenage dream was to be a heavy metal drummer and be in, like, Metallica or something. And so for him, just the glee of getting to put nine of his favourite drummers in the room and get them just to just make noise and improvise—it was just a teenage dream come true.”
The resulting energy in the room—the thundering beats driving the dance, and vice versa, in a kind of visceral, symbiotic process—was unlike anything Lake or Fox, who have worked in performance and concert settings around the world, had ever seen. And it’s still palpable in the work that finally hits the West Coast in a DanceHouse and Vancouver New Music presentation this month. In Manifesto, the nine drummers sit in a row, high above the dancers, on pink-silk-draped risers, the dancers contorting below them on the stage floor.
The unexpected, heightened look of the piece was something Lake says she had almost fully formed before she went into the creation process.
“I really wanted the audience to be able to see the drummers, because, well, drummers typically are at the back, if they're part of a band, they're at the back and you kind of have to look around the lead singer just to see them,” Lake says. “And I just absolutely love the physicality of drummers and the choreography of their playing. It’s so dynamic and interesting. And so I wanted their movement to be part of the overall picture and not just a backdrop. And for the audience's eye to be able to take in everything at once.
“I wanted there to be real clear human connection between the dancers and the drummers, and for us, as the audience, to be allowed to see that as well,” she adds.
Lake doesn’t just prominently display the drummers, but does so with an almost surreal, stylized vintage-show-biz flourish. She tells Stir she was inspired by old Hollywood staging and the perfect symmetry of old Busby Berkeley productions. Lake wanted to play with how unexpected it was to put the drum kit—more associated with grungy, dark clubs—in a perfectly lit, lavish set.
As for the movement language? At times the dancers hit an exhilarating unison driven by the percussion; at others they work in tension with, or apart from, it. Lake draws her performers from a wide range of styles—from hip-hop to contemporary ballet, just as Fox has recruited drummers from everything from jazz to rock backgrounds.
Those varying techniques mean you’ll see a range of influences in her choreography, as well. But you can also chalk Lake’s form-mashing dance up to her own, far-flung background—one that began in Saskatchewan, where she grew up skating in the winter and playing baseball in the summer. From there her family moved across the globe to Tasmania, where she first trained in contemporary dance and stayed until she was 17; then she travelled the world until she came back to Melbourne to study. And Melbourne, with its thriving arts scene, has since fed a career that’s led to the founding of Stephanie Lake Company, a role as resident choreographer at the Australian Ballet, a term as artist-in-residence at Dresden’s Semperoper Ballett, and stints as a director of massive-scale public works for more than 1,500 participants, including Pop Up Project, Moving 100, and Multiply.
Manifesto. Photo by Roy VanDerVegt
Living in th city has also, of course, led to her relationship with Fox, and the creation of many works in partnership with him. Their lives today take them, separately, criss-crossing the globe, Fox touring with major immersive 3-D laser shows for his sound compositions.
“He collaborates in lots of other fields, and he also runs a museum of antique synthesizers in Melbourne called MESS,” she relates. “So, he's a busy boy. And then I, of course, have Stephanie Lake Company, but I also do commissions with ballet companies around the world. I have the role at the Australian Ballet, the Dresden ballet, and so, yeah: I think there's a healthy amount of doing other things and then coming back together and collaborating—bringing things that we've learned from other experiences back into the collaboration.
“Somehow we've made it work so far, in a really great way, and we've continued to make shows, and we're definitely not sick of it yet. So it's actually wonderful,” she adds. “I love collaborating with Robin.”
Of all the large-scale works they’ve created, it says something that Manifesto continues to be a favourite—one of the most fun, both in the “ear-splittingly loud” creation process, and for taking on the road to perform. It makes the dancers and drummers feel good, and by all accounts, it’s a blast for audiences too.
Best of all, those audiences stretch far beyond the usual contemporary-dance crowd.
“That’s really been my mission since I started making work: just to attract a much broader audience to dance, because I really believe it's an incredible art form that can be enjoyed by everyone,” Lake enthuses. “I know that there are a lot of audiences that are just coming to watch those drummers. And then likewise, there are the dance people who are coming for the show, but then get exposed to this amazing live composition. So, I think that's a lovely part of it: that people get surprised and introduced to something that they might not normally see.” And they might even find their own body thumping a bit. 
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