Stepping away from farm to pursue love of dance

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

Growing up in Australia, Lewis Major reckoned he’d follow in his father’ s footsteps and take over the family’s 11,000-acre farm. He loved driving tractors, herding cattle and being involved in sheep-shearing.

But that was before Lewis, whose company is featuring in this year’s Arts Festival, discovered dance, aged 17.

Lewis’s mother, “who was a Bush teacher, but in a different life might have been something else”, regularly brought him to plays and art galleries in his youth, and he enjoyed those outings.

However, it was when he went to boarding school, aged 15, that arts became more important. It was drama initially, but when he started studying dance at the relatively old age of 17, “that was it”, he recalls.

“I was sporty and had a background in physical work – shearing sheep is very physical.”

What Lewis loved about dance was how it combined physicality and drama.

His passion brought him to Europe, to train and perform in classical and modern dance with leading companies, before he eventually became a choreographer.

Choreography was always in the plan but was hastened by injuries he sustained while dancing. Lewis fractured his spine in second year in ballet school due to a congenital condition that might have been diagnosed and sorted had he started dancing earlier. He still performs a bit and will be on stage at the Arts Festival.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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