Music finds a new beat

STEPHANIE LAKE

CHOREOGRAPHER (BFA(Dance) 1999)

PICTURE: CHRIS HOPKINS

An award-winning dancer and choreographer, Stephanie Lake has her own company and is also commissioned by other leading ensembles, including the Sydney Dance Company.

Her career has taken her on numerous international tours with companies such as Chunky Move. She recently returned from far north Queensland, where she premiered a new work with the Dancenorth company.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

“Recently one of my works toured to Paris to the amazing Theatre National de Chaillot, one of the most prestigious dance venues in the world. That was a pinch-yourself moment… But honestly it’s the little moments in the studio, little triumphs you have when you’re making or performing a work.”

CAREER AND INFLUENCES

Lake singles out choreographers Lucy Guerin and Gideon Obarzanek, former director of Chunky Move, as major influences.

“I’m also really influenced by my peers. I’ve collaborated in theatre, film and television and with visual artists, and I work a lot with my partner Robin Fox who’s a composer and audio-visual artist.”

WHAT BEING A DANCER AND CHOREOGRAPHER MEANS TO ME

“It’s so bound up in my whole identity, it’s really hard to separate it. I see everything through the lens of movement. It’s my passion and also my anxiety and the thing that keeps me up at night.”

A UNIVERSITY MEMORY

“Those three years were very intense, and it was a lot of really, really hard work but I look back on it fondly. In second year we had a visiting choreographer called Phillip Adams (DipArts (Dance) 1988) who established his company BalletLab the year I was graduating and that was my first job.

He’d just come back from New York and he brought something we hadn’t experienced before — an exciting physicality. It was really rough and incredibly fast. I had a lot of energy for it then! That was the kickstart of my career.”