Perth Festival 2023: Manifesto

Stephanie Lake Company

A Perth festival Co-commission

Choreographer Stephanie Lake

Composer Robin Fox

His Majesty’s Theatre February 10 – 13, 2022

(pic: Roy Vandervegt)

When all else fails –watch the drummer.

In Stephanie Lake and Robin Fox’s exhilarating dance work, Manifesto, nothing was even remotely failing, but the phalanx of nine drummers – on for each of its dancers – arcing above the Heath Ledger Theatre stage on a set (elegantly designed by Charles Davis) with more than a nod to Busby Berkely – were as irresistible as the dancers below them.

And that’s saying something. The dance ensemble was athletic, acrobatic and drilled to the millisecond, breaking out into solos and smaller combinations and back to the corps with breathtaking precision.

And, happily for someone who doesn’t claim to be fluent in the language of dance, if there was a manifesto to Manifesto, it was “we’ve got an hour and a stage – let’s see what we can do with it!”. Relieved of the stress of having to decipher what was going on and, even worse, what it meant, we are able to dive in and become a slave to its rhythm.

And what a rhythm it is – sometimes a beat but, rising to a pulse that drives life into the dance like the heartbeat of a massive animal. 

Along the way the drummers literally deconstruct the musical possibilities of their all but identical standard kits, showing what each can do individually and in unison to Fox’s amazingly various and melodic score. Anyone who went into Manifesto thinking that a drummers gig is to keep the beat and keep the band company would have had another think coming (I kept thinking of Elena Kats-Chernon’s Concerto for Eight Double Basses, another piece that masses an often-overlooked instrument to thrilling effect).

Having said that we weren’t challenged by Manifesto’s meaning, its purpose was clear; we have within us, alone or together, the power to move mountains, even if we have to break rocks to do it. The sheer work ethic of the dancers was overwhelming (even from my eyrie perched high above the distant stage I could smell the hard-earned, honest sweat of their labours!).

They may have toiled on our behalf, but it required no effort on our part to enjoy and exult in the result.

 

(Beyond these scattered observations, I defer to someone who speaks dance fluently, my editor and friend Nina Levy in Seesaw Magazine link here)