Marc Brew has always been a fighter. Such is life for a country boy destined to dance.
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The Jerilderie-born performer was five years old when he fell in love with the art form, attending jazz classes every Friday when a dance teacher would stop off in his hometown.
Best known for its rendezvous with Ned Kelly, a continuing symbol of Australian masculinity, Jerilderie did not take kindly to the boy’s flair for movement.
“A lot of people within small country towns have a very narrow perspective of who should be doing what, so seeing a boy dance was not a familiar thing,” he said.
“I was called all the names under the sun and teased a lot.”
But Brew refused to hang up his dancing shoes, saying the taunts galvanised his resolve to become a performer. He was just 11 when awarded a scholarship to the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School to study alongside other promising young dancers.
"It was so hard on him, and on his mum," his aunt, Lesley Childs, said.
"But with his talent, if he had stayed in Jerilderie, it would've been difficult to get anywhere."
That same resilience Brew called upon in childhood would need to be summoned again when a devastating car crash overseas left him paralysed from the chest down.
Brew was almost three years into his training with the Australian Ballet when he was chosen to dance for PACT, South Africa’s premier dance company.
He and three friends were leaving a rehearsal in Johannesburg when a drunk driver veered into oncoming traffic, colliding with their car.
“I remember seeing this white flash of the car that hit us, and then everything froze in time.”
His friends were killed in the collision. Brew’s life was spared, but he sustained serious internal injuries and his C6 and C7 verterbrae – the bones at the base of the neck – were shattered.
His aunt and mother flew to South Africa, not knowing the seriousness of their loved one’s condition. They were shocked by what they saw in the hospital.
“He was very bad. He couldn't talk, he was hooked up to life support at first, and then to machines,” Lesley said.
It was a fortnight before Brew woke and a doctor told him he would never walk again.
“I was like, ‘No, this can’t be happening to me’,” he said. “My whole life was dance and movement.”
Brew remembered his family breaking down beside his bed. But despite his initial shock, he remained stoic.
“The stubbornness in me said, ‘This is not going to happen’,” he said.
“I was used to being injured as a dancer, and I’m not afraid of hard work. I’ve worked hard my whole life.”
But despite battling through six months in Melbourne’s Royal Albert Hospital and another year of treatment at the Anne Caudle Centre in Bendigo, no amount of sweat could change the fact there were no opportunities for a dancer with disabilities in Australia.
“I felt like the doors were closed. People didn’t know what to do with me,” he said.
Choreographing musicals at the Bendigo Theatre Company and teaching classes at the Sharon Saunders dance school were not enough to satisfy the frustrated performer’s appetite for the stage.
It was not until he was invited to join New York performing arts company Infinity that Brew found integrated dance, the practice of artists with disabilities dancing with able-bodied performers.
The discovery was a revelation, reigniting his career and taking him across the world, first to London’s CanDoCo dance company and now as the founder of his own troupe, The Marc Brew Company, that creates work for dancers with a range of physical abilities.
But the transition to integrated dance was not a simple one.
Like his hometown, Marc had to confront his own perception of who could be a dancer, and embrace the new shape his body had taken.
“I had to stop trying to be the Marc that stood up, and I had to really feel the dance,” he said.
“When I stopped looking in the mirror, it was like the blinkers had been taken off and there were all these possibilities I didn’t know before.”
Brew’s latest show, For Now, I am…, tells the story of his rehabilitation. He said creating the piece and reliving the moment his life was irreversibly changed was an emotional but therapeutic experience.
Even though the dancer now calls Glasgow home, he said his next mission was to bring For Now, I am... to Australia.
He has spent the past week at the Australian Performing Arts Market in Brisbane, a chance for artists to showcase their work to venues and producers. He hoped the arts scene was more welcoming of integrated dance than it was after his accident 20 years ago.
“Australia needs to invest more in its artists and its arts,” he said. “There’s a lot of amazing artists, but it just needs to be better.”
On top of touring capital cities, Brew’s greatest wish is to perform again in Bendigo and Jerilderie. He visits the towns annually and said bringing For Now, I am… back to where his dance journey began, as well as where he convalesced, would be a way to thank those who supported his dreams.
“That really means a lot to me, to bring it back.”