Song and dance unite to explore the circle of life
Pulsing with energy and sensuality, Stephanie Lake’s The Chronicles explores the cycles of life and the inevitability of change – and with the addition of an acclaimed children’s choir, it’s a Brisbane Festival must.
Whether there are 50 dancers or a handful – with their accompaniment a pounding primal drumbeats or an ethereal a cappella chorus of children’s voices – Stephanie Lake Company’s work always feels big. Its impact is visceral, forged by the choreographer’s drive to connect.
In Lake’s latest creation The Chronicles, the company’s 12 elite dancers share the stage with the 30-strong Voices of Birralee children’s choir and adult baritone Oliver Mann to create an immersive sensory experience journeying “from womb to tomb” in 70 minutes.
After striking a chord with audiences in Sydney and Melbourne earlier this year – “we’ve had standing ovations at every single show”, Lake reports – The Chronicles’ world-premiere season hits Brisbane Festival in September. (It’s part of the Major Festivals Initiative enabling Australia’s leading arts events to jointly commission and present ambitious new works.)
That imperative to engage and affect audiences has seen Melbourne-based Lake emerge over the past decade as one of the country’s most acclaimed and in-demand choreographers, not only in the contemporary field but beyond – creating for ballet and opera companies, plus theatre, film, visual art and music video.
“Contemporary dance, to be honest, has a reputation for being a little bit difficult to understand or kind of inaccessible in some ways,” she acknowledges, “and it’s really been my mission since I started choreographing to break down that barrier and to extend a hand to the audience and really pull them in.
“I think dance is such an articulate art form. It can touch you in ways that that no other art form can. And so I just want people to feel something, and I don’t mind what that is – I like the mystery of that experience.”
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The Chronicles’ approach and tone contrast with SLC’s previous two Brisbane seasons also referenced above: international hits Colossus with its cast of 50 dancers (seen in April 2024); and Manifesto, a palpable spectacle detonated through nine pairs of interconnected dancers and live percussionists. (Another Major Festivals Initiative, it debuted at the 2022 Brisbane Festival.)
‘The very first seed of the idea for The Chronicles was to work with the children’s choir’
Lake explains that the divergence was born out of her desire to work with live musicians again after the “joy bomb” of Manifesto, but without repeating herself or trying to recreate the experience.
“The very first seed of the idea for The Chronicles was to work with the children’s choir and that’s just been such an amazing, delightful, emotional collaboration,” she says, adding that local choirs are involved in each location.
“It’s a lovely experience for us to have the kids as part of the warm-up and the pre-show rituals as well. They make us all so happy.”
As rewarding as the collaboration has been in itself, it also generated the unexpected benefit of fostering an additional conduit between art and audience.
“That starting point really pushed me in a different direction and opened up this new way of working,” Lake elaborates. “(The) show feels very deep and connects to audiences in a really different way – it’s still got all the hallmarks of drive, energy and rhythm in the choreography, but there’s this other layer that is quite meditative and emotional.”
That’s also reflected in the score by long-time partner and musical collaborator Robin Fox, who was similarly challenged creatively, stepping outside his electronic rhythmic wheelhouse and into more traditional acoustic territory.
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Lake highlights Fox’s composition for the children based on an old folk round and his arrangement of a well-known song that Lake is keeping a surprise.
“Even the sound worlds of the electronic tracks come from voice, from found sounds and recordings, which I think has given it a humanness that connects. It’s not clinical,” she observes.
In addition to designer Charles Davis’s use of organic elements that physically transform the Thomas Dixon Centre’s Talbot Theatre stage (Lake will only identify straw as what’s visible underfoot in the hero image), the venue’s intimate size will heighten audience members’ sense of immersion.
But due to the novelty of the work’s introspective aspect and “very, very, very soft ending”, Lake admits finding the rapt reception at Sydney Festival in January and its replication in June at Melbourne’s RISING festival “mind-boggling” and “overwhelming”.
“I was hoping that people would connect with and love the show, but I didn’t have any expectation it would bring people to their feet.”
Whereas people reported euphoric and ecstatic reactions to Manifesto, The Chronicles’ themes have tapped into a wellspring of existential reflection and profound emotion.
“That’s quite an amazing thing when you think about it – it’s dancers moving in space, music and the changing environment through light and staging. But there are no words. There’s no one telling you what to think or telling a story.”
Patrons wanting to talk about the show and share those big reactions afterwards is “the most I could ever hope for,” Lake says. “That’s what’s really touched me. People have thoughts, feelings, things they want to say, things they’re not able to say. There are a lot of tears. People are quite moved by it.
“(But they) don’t (necessarily) know why they’re feeling something. There are different scenes that affect people in different ways – you bring your own life experiences to art, don’t you?”
The Chronicles, Talbot Theatre, Thomas Dixon Centre, West End, September 10-13.