Independent dancer and choreographer Stephanie Lake has been based in Melbourne ever since she moved there to attend the Victorian College of the Arts. But when I interview her she is back in her hometown of Tasmania attending the MONA FOMA festival. In fact it was at Tasdance, Tasmania’s state company, that the then 15-year-old Stephanie first started taking contemporary dance classes offered for teenagers on weekends. She remembers loving it immediately. But the catalyst for her career came shortly afterwards when she became a founding member of Stompin, Launceston’s youth dance company. “Starting at that age – it all seemed a bit of a fantasy. But I was determined to give it a go in any case, and obviously it’s worked out very well.”
Yet it was not an easy path. Lake had to be proactive in seeking opportunities and ways to get further training. After finishing school she went travelling for a year, knowing that technique-wise she was not yet ready for the join an institution like the VCA. Nonetheless, when she returned she decided to see if dance was something she could do. Thinking back she is amazed at her audacity.
“I came back and I plonked myself on the doorstep of Tasdance and waited for the directors to turn up one day, asking them if I could do anything at all, some office work in exchange for classes... and it worked out really well. I ended up performing with the company – which is quite amazing – alongside professional dancers, and doing their touring, teaching and whatnot, so that was an incredible boot-camp experience.”
She stayed with Tasdance for just under a year, developing as a performer while solidifying her basic ballet and contemporary dance technique, until a successful audition for the VCA took her over the Bass Strait to Melbourne. She feels that she only got in by the skin of her teeth but she worked hard once she got there. At 20 she felt a lot older than her 17-year-old peers, but successfully graduated in 2000, receiving a Green Room Award for Best Emerging Dancer in her first year out of college. Since then she has worked with choreographers like Philip Adams, Gideon Obarzanek and Lucy Guerin and choreographed for a wide range of platforms including contemporary dance theatre, music clips and large scale flash mobs.
Lake has been choreographing in tandem to performing since she started to dance. She now says she is more interested in focusing on choreography. Having said that, she plans to continue doing both for as long as she can as they “feed into each other. I do love performing and I’m still interested and invigorated by performance, especially working with choreographers”. Her performance work enriches her choreography and vice versa. This year she is performing in Lucy Guerin’s Conversation Piece and will also be involved in the development of a new work by the same choreographer.
Regarding her work as an independent artist, Lake says that, “the benefits for me outweigh the negatives. But I have been very, very lucky to be working pretty consistently and am at a point now where I have more work than I can take, actually.” She has recently acquired a producer (through Insite Arts) to assist in organising and co-ordinating her various projects. The assistance could not have come at a better time. She has three new works premiering this year. Moreover, she has taken on a new role as resident director at Lucy Guerin Inc, providing her with a choreographic “home” for the year while being mentored in how a company runs and in the role of an artistic director.
“I would dearly love to have my own core of dancers, to make work consistently and to be supported to do that,” she says, while observing that choreographing works on a project by project basis is definitely working out for her at the moment. In 2011 she won a Green Room Award for Best Choreography and in 2012 she won the inaugural Peggy van Praagh Choreographic Fellowship.
Lake has had to do a lot of travelling in her career, both in tours as a dancer and to fulfil choreographic commissions overseas. But she has no regrets. “I feel fortunate to have had a very interesting, adventurous life while still having a sense of home. The Melbourne dance community has been so lovely through all the levels of activity and I’m extremely proud to be a part of it.”
She has also retained a connection to Tasmania through her work with Stompin. “I’ve returned many times to work with the young people there on becoming a professional, as a dancer who started in the same place as them.”
Geraldine Higginson