Marc Brew's 'Boys Don't Dance' Brings 80s Pop to Edinburgh Fringe
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- Marc Brew premiered autobiographical show 'Boys Don't Dance' at Assembly @ Dance Base as part of the Edinburgh Fringe, running until 23 August, focusing on his younger self growing up in rural Australia surrounded by football fans and sheep.
- Dancer Ross Malloy plays the young Marc as a proxy, with the performance capturing the character's innate joy in dancing through 80s pop tracks from Culture Club, Wham!, cartoon pop star Jem, the Wonder Woman theme, and a Footloose routine, plus Gillette jingles.
- Champion wheelchair Latin dancer Piotr Iwanicki plays the grown-up Brew remembering and reconciling with his past, with the review noting the two performers find 'synergy and inventive moves' together.
- Video designer Jamie Wardrop created an animated line-drawing backdrop that shifts from monochrome to neon as the story moves from rural hometown to the big city where Brew finds 'real freedom'.
- The show was created with eight to 13-year-olds in mind, meaning it is 'not the most complex dramatically, emotionally or choreographically' — the reviewer suggests parents may get more out of the cultural references than the target audience.
- The piece draws on Brew's earlier autobiographical work 'An Accident/A Life' (2024, made with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui), which addressed the car accident at age 20 that left him paralysed below the waist and led to a career performing and choreographing in a wheelchair.
- The staging blends disco, jazz, acro-moves and BMX tricks, with a scene of Malloy's character dressing in his mother's clothes to perform when she is out — a moment capturing both the desire to dance and the burden of hiding his true self.
Why it matters: Marc Brew extends a thread of autobiographical choreography that began with his 2024 acclaimed work about paralysis, this time turning to childhood and a rural Australian boyhood where dancing was forbidden — making it a rare Edinburgh Fringe dance piece aimed squarely at children 8-13 while still landing for adult audiences through its 80s pop soundtrack.
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