Saturday, March 28, 2026, 7:30 PM

Street and Davis Performance Hall, Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre

This performance will last approximately 60 minutes with no intermission.*

Recommended for ages 12 and up

This performance includes a loud and dynamic soundtrack, theatrical haze, strobe lighting effects, and brief nudity.

*Run times listed here are based on information provided at this time and are subject to change.

Category A $55 | Category B $40 | Category C $20
$10 students with ID and youth 18 and under

15%-25% subscription discounts available

Subscriptions on sale Thursday, June 12, 10 AM

"Manifesto is another triumph for Lake, a perfectly realized work that celebrates not just the relationship between music and dance, but also the joy of being alive. In these distressing times, we all need a dose of Manifesto’s optimism."

— Dance Australia

U.S. Premiere

With all-out dancing and electrifying sound — an explosive “tattoo to optimism” — Stephanie Lake Company's Manifesto features nine dancers and nine drummers on nine drum kits in front of a towering watermelon-pink velvet curtain.

Bringing a gutsy, original choreographic style; blissful dancing; and striking visual aesthetic, the performers unleash rebellion, radiate wonder, show tenderness, and overflow with joyousness. Busby Berkeley-opulence meets pounding percussion in this tightly crafted, remarkably innovative, and thrilling work.

The company has performed in major festivals and venues across Australia and around the world, but performances in the states are rare. Don’t miss your opportunity to catch the U.S. premiere of Manifesto in Blacksburg.

From a program note, Adelaide Festival:

“The symbiosis between dancing and drumming is so elemental to human ritual and art that it’s impossible to know which evolved first. Stephanie Lake, perhaps the most exciting choreographic talent to emerge in Australian dance in the last decade, likes to think big: her Colossus at the 2019 Melbourne Festival was a sustained hour of intricate contrapuntal movement by no less than 50 dancers. Her latest work, Manifesto, has a pitch as irresistible as it is ambitious: nine dancers, nine drum kits.

"Each drummer/dancer work as a single unit, starting small but accumulating intensity, and as the rhythms become more complex, so do the movements; blurs of frenzy alternate with thrilling unisons as the raw, un-amplified sound wraps around you with overwhelming power. Composed by sought-after iconoclast Robin Fox (of 2020’s Single Origin fame), Lake’s amazing company [is] joined by a superb team of designers for this decidedly unmilitary tattoo. Plunge into an exhilarating vortex of pure human energy.”

Stephanie Lake

Stephanie Lake is a multiaward-winning choreographer, dancer, and artistic director of Stephanie Lake Company. She is also the resident choreographer of the Australian Ballet. 

Lake’s major works — including Manifesto, Colossus, Replica, Pile of Bones, Double Blind, DUAL, A Small Prometheus, AORTA, and Mix Tape — have been performed across Australia and toured internationally to Theatre National de Chaillot (Paris); Ruhrfestspiele and Theater im Pfalzbau (Germany); Antigel Festival (Switzerland); Place des Arts, Danse (Montreal); TOLive (Toronto); Dublin Dance Festival, Tramway (Glasgow); M1 Contact Festival (Singapore); Aarhus Festival (Denmark); Beijing Dance (China); Theatre de la Ville (Luxembourg); Concertgebouw Brugge (Belgium); Hong Kong Arts Festival; and Taipei National Theatre and Concert Hall, among others.

Lake has been awarded the Helpmann Award, two Australian Dance Awards, two Green Room Awards, and the Melbourne Fringe Award for Most Outstanding Choreography. In 2013 she was appointed inaugural resident director of Lucy Guerin Inc., which included working as Guerin’s choreographic assistant at Lyon Opera Ballet. Lake received a prestigious Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship in the same year, as well as the Dame Peggy Van Praagh Choreographic Fellowship in 2012. She was the recipient of the Australia Council Fellowship for Dance for 2018-2019 and Chloe Munro AO Fellowship in 2022.

Members of Stephanie Lake Company wear white costumes and dance, some leaping into the air, on stage in front of a towering pink curtain and several drummers. Members of Stephanie Lake Company wear white costumes and perform while seated on stage in front of a towering pink curtain. Members of Stephanie Lake Company wear white costumes and perform on stage in front of a towering pink curtain and several drummers. Members of Stephanie Lake Company wear white costumes and perform on stage in front of a towering pink curtain and several drummers. Members of Stephanie Lake Company wear white costumes and perform on stage in front of a towering pink curtain and several drummers. Members of Stephanie Lake Company wear white costumes and perform on stage in front of a towering pink curtain and several drummers. Members of Stephanie Lake Company wear white costumes and perform on stage in front of a towering pink curtain and several drummers. Members of Stephanie Lake Company wear white costumes and perform on stage in front of a towering pink curtain and several drummers. Members of Stephanie Lake Company wear white costumes and perform on stage in front of a towering pink curtain and several drummers. Members of Stephanie Lake Company wear white costumes and perform on stage in front of a towering pink curtain and several drummers. Members of Stephanie Lake Company wear white costumes and perform on stage in front of a towering pink curtain and several drummers. A member of Stephanie Lake Company wears a white costume and performs on stage.

Lake has created multiple works for Sydney Dance Company (The Universe is Here, Dream Lucid, and Elektra), Chunky Move (AORTA, Mix Tape, The Loop, Our Golden Cages, and Broken Wing), the Australian Ballet (Circle Electric), Queensland Ballet (Biography and Chameleon), Dancenorth (If Never Was Now), New Zealand Dance Company (If Never Was Now), Tasdance (The Howl), Expressions Dance Company (Ceremony), Australasian Dance Collective and Beijing Dance/LDTX (Auto Cannibal), Stompin, Frontier Danceland – Singapore (White Noise), and the Victorian College of the Arts. 

She collaborates across theatre (Monsters, Lazurus, Black Rider, and The Effect), film and TV (Guilty, Picnic at Hanging Rock, TVC’s for Myer, and Neighbours), visual art (Giant Theremin, How to Feel, and GAPS), and music video (Missy Higgins, Clare Bowditch, and Augie March), and has directed several large-scale public works involving over 1,500 participants, including Pop Up Project, Moving 100, and Multiply in 2020.

This is Stephanie Lake Company's first performance at the center.

Photos by Roy VanDerVegt, Sam Roberts, Wendell Teodoro, and Mark Gambino