Manifesto

Drummers are in a rare spotlight in Stephanie Lake’s thunderous new dance work. Nine of them with drum kits are grandly elevated in a semi-circle draped in glamorous pink velvet, hard-hitters, but with a touch of Busby Berkley opulence.  

At their feet, are nine dancers, sitting initially on chairs, with each making their own idiosyncratic movements twitching to a staccato percussion.  This is classic Stephanie Lake.

Her last work for Sydney Festival 2020, Colossus, used massed dancers to play out the tug of war between individual initiative and group action. Here in Manifesto, as the drumming turns syncopated, small groups cluster, gesturing to individuals and entwining them into their outstretched limbs.

Individuals also take to the stage alone, joshing with the drummers, dancing to their beat, in what is a perfect synergy of choreography and percussion, with neither leading the pack. 

Lake had many months in a Melbourne lockdown working with her partner and long-time musical collaborator Robin Fox to make, for post-COVID, what she calls an explosive tattoo to optimism. The louder the better.   

Interestingly, the solo dancers often draw on images and gestures of sickness, with spasms, even fits, cradling their heads, crooking their arms, even vomiting.  One without strength in her legs is tenderly supported and recharged by two other male dancers.  Some individual choreography thrashes around without much focus; Lake’s brilliance is in her group work.

Manifesto does roar to a strong end, as the nine drummers let rip. The dancers thrash to an almost nihilistic celebration of joy – but also it seems of chaos and destruction.  Beyond the four piece, rock n roll drum kit, I missed the soft beat and rising crescendo of Oriental and South American drumming, offering a more transcendent pathway to joy.  (Neighbours offers that elsewhere in this Festival).

But undeniably our blood quickens with the rush of the dancers and the sound assault behind them. Bosco Shaw’s spot lighting on both supports the theatrical punctuation, shining on Charles Davis’ set and Paula Lewis’ effective, loose white trousers and tops. 

The opening night audience was on its feet by the finish.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Wendell Teodoro.