Acclaimed Australian choreographer Stephanie Lake, who heads the Stephanie Lake Company, is to create a mass dance event for the opening weekend of the 2025 Adelaide Festival.

The work, which will feature 1,000 dancers from South Australia, has been commissioned by Adelaide Festival and The Australian Ballet, where Lake is currently Resident Choreographer.

Stephanie Lake. Photo © Pedro Greig

The dancers must be aged 12 and above, but can come from any dance style – ballet, contemporary, jazz, hip-hop, swing, tap, ballroom, salsa, samba, aerobics, Bharatanatyam, belly dance and others – and any skill level.

Participants will start rehearsals through online videos, then rehearse live during the week before the performance on 1 March.

Described by Limelight reviewer Deborah Jones as “one of our most original, searching, risk-taking minds in dance,” Lake is renowned for her interest in working with crowds to create large-scale participatory dance works such as Multiply from 2020. Conceived during the pandemic to promote connections to people living in one of the world’s most locked-down cities, Multiply featured 400 Melbourne dancers who learned the choreography online and performed it in socially distanced settings.

Her major work...