Two UK Dance Premieres From Lewis Major Come to Edinburgh Festival Fringe

House of Oz is presenting two UK premieres from choreographer to watch, Lewis Major, as part of a portfolio of shows at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  

Triptych, a captivating triple bill, and Lien, a performance by a single dancer for a single audience member, were triumphant at the Adelaide and Sydney Fringes where they picked up a host of awards and wonderful reviews. Very different in scale, both shows embody the beauty of human connection and the power of shared moments.
In Triptych, each of the three pieces fuses light, movement and design to investigate poetic possibilities, life cycles and universal rhythms.

Russell Maliphant's Two x Three developed out of an iconic solo first created for his partner Dana Fouras in 1997. Bathed in spare, intimate lighting by Michael Hulls to music by Andy Cowton, three dancers execute Maliphant's beautiful restrained choreography, becoming involved in a mysterious game of call and response between movement, sound and music.

Creation for Lewis Major's Unfolding first began during lockdown when Major experimented in his living room wearing a motion-tracking suit which enabled him to input his movements into a video game-style digital space. In the work that emerged, pulsating musical accompaniment by composer James Brown and shifting 3D animations by lighting designer Fausto Brusamolino generate the hyper-real feel of video games. Four dancers gradually shed their costumes and reveal their vulnerabilities, shifting from a futuristic sculptural state to an organic, peaceful and tender mood.

Epilogue is a crystalline solo work. A lone figure, covered in fine white powder, executes sinuous, spiral sequences on a bare stage, patterns emerging on the floor surface as they move. This hypnotic piece is a meditation on artistic harmony and classicism where modernity and tradition interact in perfect harmony. The music is by Dane Yates inspired by Claude Debussy and Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Ten minutes long, Lien is an extraordinary one-on-one experience between a performer and a viewer. One audience member and one dancer come together on an otherwise empty stage, the lights dimmed to near blackness. At first with their identities concealed, they begin a conversation. As a connection is made, the dancer begins to craft a performance in response. A singular ten-minute encounter unfolds, never to be repeated. This powerful and moving event is a testimony to community and empathy.

Based between the deep south of Australia and Adelaide, Lewis Major is a dance artist with a background in sheep shearing and a foreground in contemporary dance theatre. He grew up on his family's 11,000-acre farm (more than half the size of Brighton), attended bush school and didn't set foot in a theatre until his teens. He took up gymnastics but when he saw Garry Stewart's work for Australian Dance Theatre was driven to move into dance. In his early 20s, while studying ballet at New Zealand School of Dance, he broke his back and discovered a congenital condition which took him away from performance and into choreography.  Lewis has worked with some of the biggest names in international contemporary dance including Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Russell Maliphant, Hofesh Shechter and Aakash Odedra. His company, Lewis Major Projects was in residence at the Centre National de la danse in Lyon until 2017 when he decided to move back to his home state of South Australia, feeling it was the right place to pursue his creation of unabashedly audience-driven work with a local focus and a global outlook.

Triptych and Lien are part of a portfolio of 12 shows that House of Oz is presenting on its third visit to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. For the first time, the organisation comes as ‘a house without walls' having brokered a partnership with Assembly Festival which means every one of its shows can be seen in the best possible space. Further details in notes to editors.

The dancers are: Stefaan Morrow, Clementine Benson, Jareen Wee, Macon Riley.

Triptych, two works by Lewis Major and a seminal piece from Russell Maliphant
Assembly @ Dance Base: Dance Base 1
Friday 2 to Sunday 25 August at 21.40
Press showing: Saturday 3 August

Lien, an intimate ten-minute one-on-one performance
Assembly @ Dance Base: Dance Base 1
Six dates between Sunday 4 to Sunday 25 August, shows at 17.30, 17.45, 18.00 and 18.15
Press showing: by arrangement
 

To post a comment, you must register and login.