Marc Brew on defying gender roles: ‘Having a boy dance wasn’t common at all’
Growing up in outback Australia and later experiencing a life-changing accident, choreographer Marc Brew was always told he either couldn’t or shouldn’t dance. Lucy Ribchester finds him turning that negativity around in a show that galvanises young dancers of all body types
Every artist has their naysayers to overcome, but it’s safe to say choreographer and dancer Marc Brew had more than his fair share of being told, ‘no, you can’t dance’. The first time came when he was a boy, in 1980s rural Australia. Gender roles were rigidly defined and boys were destined for football and cricket, certainly not grooving to Whitney Houston or leaping around to ‘Footloose’. Brew defied these small-town prejudices, however, and went on to train as a professional ballet dancer. Then, while working in South Africa in 1997, a drunk driver hit a car he was travelling in, killing three of his friends and leaving him paralysed from the chest down. He began fielding a fresh round of negativity, this time focused on the idea that disabled people don’t dance.
Brew chronicled his accident in 2024’s outstanding dance-memoir An Accident/A Life. But even after the success of that show, he still felt he had more of his autobiography to explore. ‘I started thinking that there’s an interesting connection there and potentially a powerful story for young audiences to witness and experience,’ Brew says over Zoom, ‘to learn about the power of the human will and also the inspiration to fulfil one’s dreams even though there are obstacles in the way.’ After writing his ideas down, he shared them with children’s theatre producers Imaginate, where they were initially turned down for funding. Yet another ‘no’. But if Brew has learned anything, it’s to push back at every barrier, regardless. Eventually the Imaginate team came back to him with a commission. The piece became Boys Don’t Dance and headlined the Edinburgh International Children’s Festival earlier this year.
‘If you’ve watched the movie Billy Elliot,’ Brew says, ‘I was sort of like the Aussie outback version.’ A dance teacher would come to his village once a week on Fridays and Brew would go along to the local jazz ballet class. But that was also when the prejudice began. ‘Having a boy dance wasn’t common at all. I was teased and bullied and bashed up many times by local kids, but also their parents called me names as well.’ The bullying was relentless but Brew found solace with a group of girls who encouraged him to keep going to classes. In turn, he used to teach them routines at school.
In Boys Don’t Dance, a version of young Brew is played by able-bodied dancer Ross Malloy, while wheelchair World Latin Dance champion Piotr Iwanicki takes the role of older, post-accident Brew. The duets they perform together are exhilarating, full of spins, balances and mirroring, with Malloy spending some of the time on a BMX, mirroring Iwanicki’s wheels. Brew hopes attitudes have changed since he was a boy or a young, disabled artist, but nevertheless feels strongly that there is always room to celebrate difference. ‘That’s what I wanted this piece to really be about; that difference is ok, and through difference there’s beauty and there are possibilities.’
Boys Don’t Dance, Assembly Dance Base, 7–23 August, 1.15pm.