Stephanie Lake

Delving into Dance

Those familiar with Melbourne’s independent dance scene will know Stephanie Lake. A dancer and choreographer, Lake’s CV has a long list of credits including Chunky Move and Lucy Guerin Inc. She started dance reasonably late for a woman, and forged a career through her unique physical style. Lake said:

“My hair would never go neatly into a bun … I didn’t know any of the ballet language… I think that it can actually be a positive, because you want individual voices in the arts.”

Lake continues to push expectations of the form and is known for physically demanding choreography.

She was awarded the Australian Dance Award in 2014 for Outstanding Achievement in Choreography, and the Helpmann Award for Best Choreography in Dance or Physical Theatre Work 2014 for A Small Prometheus. Mix Tape (2010) received the Green Room award for Best Choreography.

Featured

Dalisa Pigram

‘We value everyone equally, but you know, of course each person has a role to play in the team that's been created, but no one is, you know, less valuable than another.’

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Daniel Riley

‘My daughter Billie, she was in rehearsal today. My son Archie grew up the first two or three years of his life, like, on tour with me when I was with Bangarra Dance Theatre and just being in the artistic environment and being surrounded by people is such a beautiful gift, I think, that I can give to them as well.’

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Antony Hamilton

‘When I'm making dance and when I think about choreography or art, I often relate my early childhood experiences to the things that I make now as well.’

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Alice Topp

‘I guess for a lot of people, ballet is still very much an evolving, developing language. I think people think it was probably stuck in a time and hasn't progressed. But modern ballet is very challenging and arresting and it's finding new ways of working with an old structure.’

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Her work has toured to Germany, France, Ireland, Denmark, Singapore and Australia with a range of work including : Mix Tape; AORTA; Dual; Double Blind and If I Was.

She now spends the majority of her time as a choreographer and a mother of two children, but is still dancing and continually finding a balancing between all of her passions and the responsibilities of motherhood.

Lake has been commissioned by Sydney Dance Company, Chunky Move, Dance North, Tasdance, Stompin, Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Frontier Danceland (Singapore).

We met in the noisy foyer of the Malthouse early on a cold Melbourne morning, before she was starting a new development, in the pipeline for 2017. Our conversation moved from discussions of process, motivation, goals and children. We started talking about moving from a career primarily dancing to one of choreography.

Stephanie Lake early in to her choreographic career is set to make her mark as a prominent Australian choreographer.

Stay tuned for another stimulating episode. We will be hitting the web in two weeks time as we continue to explore the world of dance, with interviews from Deborah Jowett, Joshua Pether, Gideon Obarzanek and Rafael Bonachela in the pipeline.

“I get so nervous going in to rehearsal … I have these fantasies about jobs where you are not witnessed”

Image by: Joshua Lowe.