In 2022, I saw Manifesto, an incredible visual dance work that premiered at the Adelaide Festival that year. I was very pleased that the Festival was able to bring back Stephanie Lake and her company to present The Chronicles for this year’s Festival.
Born in Canada and raised from the age of eight in Tasmania, Lake has developed a reputation as one of Australia’s most imaginative contemporary choreographers. In collaboration with composer and sound artist Robin Fox, she has created a work that is as sonically compelling as it is visually arresting.
The Chronicles opens with a solitary dancer representing birth, before expanding into a sweeping exploration of life’s cycles and the inevitability of change. Performed by a formidable ensemble of twelve dancers, the choreography is dynamic, rhythmic and often exhilarating, unfolding in perfect synchrony with Fox’s pulsating and sometimes frenetic score.
The production’s visual imagination is equally striking. The initial visual and aural bombardment of dancers moving from one side of the stage to the other and back in coordinated sequences is difficult to take in as a whole. During a memorable sequence, the twelve dancers form a precise three-by-four grid, each performer framed within a square shaft of light as they execute tightly synchronised movements. In another moment of theatrical playfulness, a “pillow fight” with hay bales provides both humour and is a surprisingly captivating visual spectacle.
Another layer to the performance is the participation of members of the Young Adelaide Voices Youth Choir singing live from a raised platform decorated with lush green foliage above the stage. From above, the intense physicality of the dancers provides an evocative soundscape that contrasts with the earlier mechanical, percussive soundtrack. Afterwards, they join and interact with the dancers and participate physically in the performance.
Late in the performance, baritone Oliver Mann delivers a poignant a cappella rendition of Forever Young (originally by Alphaville), adding a reflective emotional note to the work’s meditation on time and change.
The Chronicles is an ambitious and multifaceted dance work, and a worthy inclusion in the 2026 Adelaide Festival. Let’s hope Stephanie Lake and her company can bring a new production back to Adelaide again in the future.
Adelaide Festival Review By Richard De Pizzol