Marc Brew joins with Rawcus

Internationally renowned UK-based choreographer Marc Brew has teamed up with local company, the Rawcus Ensemble, for a new work to be presented at Northcote Town Hall Arts Centre from 7 – 11 July. It is yet another example of cross-continent collaboration enabled by virtual technology.

Called GLASS, it was meant to premiere in 2020 but was stalled by the global pandemic. As a result the project has become an experiment in international collaboration, a response to the challenge of creating a work together when travel is no longer possible.

Combining moments of vulnerability and humour, GLASS is highly physical, sculptural, unexpected and tender. Thirteen performers negotiate an evolving performance space supported by an immersive soundscape.

Delving into dynamics of power, restriction, tenacity and ambition, this new work interrogates invisible edges, boundaries and barriers. GLASS is an invitation to redefine success, limitations, and virtuosity.

Brew and the Rawcus Ensemble team first met through a skills development exchange in 2018, where the concept of GLASS was first thought of as a possible performance work. Embracing the experience of connecting through distance and the technology that allows us to do this, Brew has choreographed the work from the UK, joining Rawcus remotely in the rehearsal room.

Rawcus is a critically acclaimed long-term ensemble of performers with diverse minds, bodies and imaginations. Rawcus’s work has won numerous awards and has featured as part of Dance Massive, the Melbourne International Arts Festival, Next Wave and Melbourne Fringe, and they have worked collaboratively with diverse Australian arts companies including Restless Dance Company, Born in a Taxi, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Made Opera. Their most recent work, Song For A Weary Throat, won three Green Room Awards and was nominated for a Helpmann Award for Best Production.

Now based in Glasgow, Marc Brew trained as a professional dancer at the Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School and the Australian Ballet School. He has been working in the UK and internationally for the past 20 years as a dancer, choreographer, director, teach and speaker, with the Australian Ballet Company, State Theatre Ballet Company of South Africa, Infinity dance Theatre in New York and the CandoCo Dance Company. He was a guest performer, collaborator and media spokesperson for the London Hand Over Ceremony for the Beijing Olympic and Paralympic Games Closing Ceremony and in 2009 was appointed Associate Director with the Scottish Dance Theatre, Scotland’s principal contemporary dance company.

More info and tickets here.

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