Manifesto

Nine dancers. Nine drummers. Nine drum kits.

An explosive ‘tattoo to optimism’, Manifesto features nine dancers and nine drummers on nine drum-kits in front of a towering watermelon-pink velvet curtain. In precision concert, they unleash rebellion, command obedience, radiate wonder and show tenderness. Busby Berkeley opulence meets pounding percussion in a rallying cry for solidarity.

“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 are joined by a superb team of designers for this decidedly unmilitary tattoo. Plunge into an exhilarating vortex of pure human energy.” 

Program Note: Adelaide Festival

“Ecstatic and bombastic... a giddy blend of synchronised sharpness and freewheeling rebellion.”

– ArtsHub ★★★★★

“An explosive, ecstatic and primal phenomenon.”

— InDaily