Manifesto
Stephanie Lake Company (Australia)
Co-presented with Vancouver New Music
Note: This performance contains haze, flashing lights, and brief nudity.
Nine dancers, nine drummers, thunder unleashed.
Channeling ancient rituals of catharsis, Australia’s Stephanie Lake Company fuses different dance styles to create choreographic fission. A kind of performative ordnance, explosive in its sheer power, Manifesto takes inspiration from the primeval connection between drumming and dancing, combining attack and rhythm, chaos and order to create obliterating dynamism.
In this ‘tattoo to optimism’ musicians and dancers fuse their respective instruments to offer up a collective call for radical joy. Against the backdrop of a towering velvet curtain, Manifesto sets loose a cacophonic wall of sound, grounded in effort and soaring on human energy. Pairing performers into units, the work ratchets up in intensity, adding complex rhythms with choreographic phrases, blurring the lines between cohesion and bedlam into a capering brand of wild rebellion.
Stephanie Lake’s ability to marshal a maelstrom is met by composer Robin Fox, who channels the glittering energies of old time Hollywood extravaganzas. The result is a dance work you feel in your gut, radiating out in lay lines of syncopated rhythm. Composed of heartbeats, breath, and percussive forces building to a cataclysmic crescendo it is a fusion of sound and fury, signifying everything.
Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals Inc, commissioned by Rising, Adelaide Festival, Brisbane Festival, Perth Festival, and Sydney Festival.
Manifesto has been supported by Creative Victoria, Australia Council for the Arts, City of Moreland, City of Melbourne and Creative Partnerships Australia though Plus 1. Manifesto has also been assisted through the generous support of Canny Quine Foundation, Humanity Foundation, Linda Herd, Chloe Munro AO, Barry and Deborah Conyngham, Michael Kantor, Monica Lim and Konfir Kabo, Anne Runhardt, Ziyin Gantner, Gillian and Ian McDougall, Zoe and Vafa Ferdowsian, James McCaughey, Fiona Sweet, Fiona and Tony Osmond, Jenny Kinder, Carole Lander and Anonymous.
Top image: Stephanie Lake Company, Manifesto © Roy VanDerVegt.
April 16-18, 2026 | 8pm
Vancouver Playhouse
600 Hamilton Street
Running time: 60 minutes (no intermission)
Hours: 10am-4pm, Monday–Friday
Phone: 604.801.6225
Email: boxoffice@dancehouse.ca
7:15pm each night in the Upper Lobby
⚠ Limited tickets available
- April 16, 2026 - 380 seats available
- April 17, 2026 - 146 seats available
- April 18, 2026 - 268 seats available
“For the furious final image, the drummers create unbelievable sound patterns, ending in an orgiastic crash and thunder. More climax is not possible.”
Manifesto Germany
“So exhilarating, it borders on the liturgical.”
Australian Pride Network
“A stunning demonstration of the visceral relationship between rhythm and dance."
The Advertiser
Stephanie Lake Company is a multi-award winning contemporary dance company based in Melbourne (Naarm), Australia that tours the world.
Lauded for major shows such as Manifesto, Colossus and The Chronicles, Stephanie Lake Company creates powerful dance works that are emotionally charged & intelligently crafted. The shows are renowned for their humanity, humour and electrifying physicality.
Working in collaboration with Australia’s leading dancers and designers, the company has performed in major festivals and venues across Australia and the world, touring internationally to France, Germany, Hong Kong, Denmark, Spain, Canada, Singapore, Scotland, Ireland, Argentina, Taiwan and more. Alongside mainstage works, the company also creates mass participation performances that have involved over 2500 community dancers to date.
Stephanie Lake Company collaborates across theatre, film, music video, opera and visual art and supports the next generation of artists through choreographic commissions, workshops, internships and mentoring.
Stephanie Lake
Stephanie Lake was born in Saskatoon, Canada, raised in Tasmania and is now based in Melbourne (Naarm), Australia. She has choreographed for over 25 years and founded Stephanie Lake Company in 2014. Lake was appointed Resident Choreographer of The Australian Ballet in 2024 and Artist in Residence (AiR) of Semperoper Ballet, Dresden in 2025. Her major works including The Chronicles, Manifesto, Colossus, Circle Electric, Pile of Bones and Double Blind have been performed across Australia and toured to 16 countries worldwide.
Lake has created works for the Nuremberg Ballet, The Australian Ballet, Sydney Dance Company, Queensland Ballet, Dancenorth, New Zealand Dance Company, Chunky Move, Tasdance, Expressions Dance Company, Beijing Dance/LDTX, Stompin and Frontier Danceland (Singapore) among others. She collaborates across theatre, film, opera, visual art and music video and has directed several large-scale public participation performances involving over 2500 participants.
Lake’s works have won Helpmann, Green Room and Australian Dance Awards for Outstanding Choreography and have been nominated for a Hong Kong Performance Award and a Buenos Aires Theatre Award for Best International Show. She is the recipient of a prestigious Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship, the Chloe Munro Fellowship, the Dame Peggy Van Praagh Choreographic Fellowship, and an Australia Council Fellowship for Dance. Her performance career spanned twenty years, during which she toured and danced extensively with Chunky Move, Lucy Guerin Inc and Phillip Adams’ BalletLab. Lake sits on the Victorian College of the Arts Advisory Board.
Dates & Times
April 16, 2026 | 8:00 PM
April 17, 2026 | 8:00 PM
April 18, 2026 | 8:00 PM
