Stephanie Lake’s latest choreographic work The Chronicles premiered last week at the Roslyn Packer Theatre as part of Sydney Festival. Featuring an all-star cast of twelve of Australia’s leading contemporary dance artists, a new score by experimental sound artist Robin Fox, and on-stage vocal performances from Oliver Mann and the Sydney Children's Choir, the scale of Lake’s Chronicles is grandiose. More than just a dance work, The Chronicles functions as a gesamtkunstwerk, seamlessly uniting different artistic languages - dance, sound, opera, set design, costume and lighting - with each element executed to a high caliber. Ambitious interdisciplinarity is typical of Lake’s choreographic output, but The Chronicles takes fusion one step further through it’s ‘chronicling’ of starkly different aesthetic and thematic worlds to create a real visual and experiential journey.

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The Chronicles is a highly engaging interdisciplinary dance work on an excitingly ambitious scale. However, further to the exceptional production, Chronicles left me wondering how it is that an ensemble of independent, project-based dancers are working with a level of fitness, power, and artistry that would make any professional athlete on a full-time contract tremble in fear. The work is highly demanding, both physically and artistically, and the level of training needed to tackle such a work is no small feat. Lake’s dancers rose to the challenge and then some, making The Chronicles not just an exciting new mixed-media choreographic venture, but a testament to the level of expertise existing in Australia’s freelance dance scene.

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