About stephanie

Stephanie Lake was born in Saskatoon, Canada, raised in Launceston Tasmania and is now based in Melbourne (Naarm), Australia. She is a multi award-winning choreographer, dancer and artistic director of Stephanie Lake Company. She is also the Resident Choreographer of The Australian Ballet.

Her 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 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, Taipei National Theatre and Concert Hall among others.

Stephanie 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 Stephanie was appointed inaugural Resident Director of Lucy Guerin Inc, which included working as Guerin’s choreographic assistant at Lyon Opera Ballet. Stephanie received a prestigious Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship in the same year and 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.

Stephanie has created multiple works for Sydney Dance Company (The Universe is Here, Dream Lucid, Elektra), Chunky Move (AORTA, Mix Tape, The Loop, Our Golden Cages, Broken Wing), The Australian Ballet (Circle Electric), Queensland Ballet (Biography, Chameleon), Dancenorth (If Never Was Now), New Zealand Dance Company (If Never Was Now), Tasdance (The Howl), Expressions Dance Company (Ceremony), Australasian Dance Collective & 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, The Effect), film and TV (Guilty, Picnic At Hanging Rock, TVC’s for Myer, Neighbours), visual art (Giant Theremin, How to Feel, GAPS) and music video (Missy Higgins, Clare Bowditch, Augie March) and has directed several large-scale public works involving over 1500 participants including Pop Up Project, Moving 100 and Multiply in 2020.

Stephanie sits on the Victorian College of the Arts Advisory Board and is Ambassador for Stompin youth dance company based in Tasmania. Her performance career spanned twenty years, touring and dancing extensively with Chunky Move, Lucy Guerin Inc and Phillip Adams’ BalletLab.

Read more about Stephanie’s life and work here.

Listen to her interview with Radio National here.