A drunk driver hit our car, my three friends died, and I began a fight for my life – and my ballet career | Dance

Marc Brew was sitting within the again seat of a automobile on a motorway close to Johannesburg, telling jokes and laughing together with his buddies, when a pickup got here hurtling down the fallacious facet of the highway in the direction of them. “Out of nowhere, I simply keep in mind seeing this white flash,” says Brew, who was 20 on the time. The truck, which he later discovered had a drunk driver on the wheel, drove straight into the automobile he was in. The crash killed everybody else within the automobile.9 months beforehand, Brew had moved from Australia to South Africa to hitch the Pact ballet firm, based mostly in Pretoria. That Saturday, he had attended his typical morning dance courses, earlier than he and his buddy Joanne, one other member of the corporate, set off together with her brother, Simon, and Simon’s fiancee’s brother, Toby, in the direction of a recreation reserve the place that they had deliberate to go bush strolling. When the truck hit, “it was like time froze”, Brew, now 48, remembers. “I keep in mind my ears have been ringing actually loud, like I’d been at a live performance.”Younger expertise … Marc Brew earlier than the accident, on the Australian Ballet College in 1996. {Photograph}: Courtesy of Marc BrewJoanne had fallen off the seat subsequent to Brew’s and was at his toes. Within the entrance of the automobile, Brew remembers seeing Simon slumped over the steering wheel and Toby, who was solely 16, on the dashboard. “I used to be attempting to yell out to them, however I didn’t know if I used to be being verbal. I simply couldn’t transfer. And I keep in mind my neck was hurting,” he says. “Then I will need to have misplaced consciousness.”When Brew got here spherical, he might really feel a ache in his neck and gravel digging in to the again of his head – he had been moved to the facet of the highway. “Properly, I’m alive,” he thought, when he heard individuals speaking. It was a scorching day, and he might make out shadows, as individuals moved round him, and heard somebody say: “You’ll be OK.”“Don’t fear about me – I’m effective,” he replied. “Simply take care of Joanne, Simon and Toby.” He nonetheless had the picture in his head of them contained in the automobile.He was bundled into an ambulance, then a helicopter, with only one thought racing by his thoughts earlier than he misplaced consciousness once more: “I’ve acquired to inform my mum.” Brew grew up in a single-parent household, residing together with his mom in a two-bedroom flat in Jerilderie, a small rural city in New South Wales. She had at all times been his largest supporter. She despatched him to his first dance class when he was a small little one, and, after he was provided a scholarship to a dance boarding college in Melbourne, aged 10, she recurrently drove the eight-hour spherical journey to go to him.The subsequent factor he remembers, she was there. Brew had been in hospital for 2 weeks by the point his mom and aunt arrived from Australia – his mom needed to get an emergency passport and borrow cash for the flight, in addition to organise childcare for Brew’s two half-siblings – however he doesn’t keep in mind something from that interval. He discovered later that he had been bleeding internally due to the influence of the seatbelt in the course of the crash (“however the seatbelt additionally did save my life”) so the docs, he says, “shoved me with ice packs” to attempt to cease the bleeding. That labored, and surgeons have been in a position to function on the organs that had been broken. “My plumbing acquired reorganised slightly bit,” Brew says. “As soon as I used to be secure from all these inner accidents, they then observed my legs weren’t shifting any extra.”Flying excessive … Brew within the Sleeping Magnificence, in 1997, earlier than his accident. {Photograph}: Courtesy of Marc BrewThough hospital information confirmed Brew had been in a position to transfer his limbs when he was first admitted, he can solely keep in mind waking up in a physique he might barely transfer. Initially, it wasn’t simply his legs he couldn’t really feel – he couldn’t communicate or use his arms both, talents that progressively got here again to him. “I keep in mind seeing my physique and I didn’t recognise it,” he says. “My toes have been swollen, they only weren’t shifting, nothing was shifting. So it felt completely international.” Being a dancer, he was used to feeling in tune together with his physique. “And now that was all minimize off.”He was despatched for a CT scan, which discovered that his spinal twine had been injured on the neck, leaving him paralysed from the chest down. Whereas he was within the scanner, he suffered a cardiac arrest, waking as much as somebody resuscitating him. This was one in every of a number of instances Brew felt near dying throughout his time in hospital: “I keep in mind having a number of emotions and sensations like I used to be sinking in my mattress and falling away to black,” he says. “I actually needed to carry on combating arduous, virtually like popping out of water, attempting to stand up to breathe, to outlive.”Dance is about expressing myself by motion, and I might nonetheless do thatFor a number of weeks, he selected not to consider the chance that his sensation may by no means return. “I used to be in denial fully,” he says. As a dancer, he was used to coping with accidents and going by rehabilitation. “It’s effective,” he remembers pondering. He was eager to get again to Australia, the place he believed he would “simply go to rehab and do workouts and work arduous”.It wasn’t till “this horrible second” when a physician knowledgeable him he was paralysed that he was pressured to return to phrases with what his future may appear to be. “It was like a film, actually, the place the physician is available in after which tells you, ‘Sorry, Mr Brew, however you’re by no means going to stroll once more’,” he says.A brand new path … Brew in For Now, I Am, when he determined he wanted to reframe his targets. {Photograph}: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian“That may’t be taking place to me,” was his first thought. “I’m Marc. I’m a dancer … I can’t not stroll once more.”It was at across the identical time – a couple of month into his hospital keep – that Brew discovered his buddies had died. He “type of knew” that Simon and Toby have been useless, he says, having seen their faces within the automobile. However Joanne’s face had been lined by her hair. “I don’t know why, however I believed that Joanne was going to be OK,” he says – till her greatest buddy came visiting him and informed him she hadn’t made it. On the time, he was speaking by way of an alphabet board, utilizing blinks to spell out phrases, letter by letter. When he requested the place Joanne was, her buddy pointed upwards. He thought she should be within the ward above him. “Then she stated to me: ‘Joanne’s in heaven.’”It was some time earlier than he was able to ask what had occurred to the motive force of the opposite automobile. He was informed that he was alive, and hadn’t suffered any severe accidents. He had been arrested and was later jailed. Joanne’s mother and father – who had misplaced their son and their daughter – have been so offended “they couldn’t even bear to see me”, Brew says. By way of remedy and rehabilitation, Brew’s personal anger ultimately handed, however he nonetheless didn’t purchase the argument of a few of his non secular buddies: “This occurred for a purpose.”He says: “Joanne, Simon and Toby have been loving, caring, humorous individuals. How come their lives have been taken away and the way come my life was left like this? I can’t see any purpose for that.”Brew works with dancers at Zaccho Dance theater in San Francisco, California. {Photograph}: San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers/Getty ImagesSo Brew determined to take advantage of his life in his buddies’ honour. He felt “an enormous lot of duty”, as the one survivor. “I now needed to survive for them as properly. Nobody informed me that I had to do this, however I felt that. I nonetheless really feel that.”After three months within the South African hospital, Brew was allowed to journey again to Australia, the place he spent an extra 4 months in a residential rehabilitation centre. The flight was a “horrible, demeaning expertise”, with different passengers peering up at him as he lay on a stretcher beneath the overhead baggage compartments.He grew to dread public consideration: after creating his motor abilities and studying to make use of his wheelchair within the security of rehab, Brew joined a few of his fellow residents on an outing to a shopping center. “Everybody stared at me as a result of I used to be on this wheelchair and it was simply horrible,” he says. “That took so much to handle to take care of.”At first, Brew discovered it arduous to just accept his bodily limitations and the assistance he now required. “I used to be simply naive and cussed,” he says. “I didn’t need my nan to see me. I didn’t need household to see me. As a result of I used to be at all times the one making one thing of their life, you already know, this nation boy who moved to the town to be a dancer.”A life turned the wrong way up … Brew in An Accident/A Life, a dramatisation of the crash. {Photograph}: Filip Van RoeAnd now?“I used to be so uncovered and didn’t need anybody to see me weak like that,” he says. As he struggled to return to phrases with the actual fact he wanted help with fundamental duties – such because the time he needed to ask his mum to assist him have a shower – “there have been moments that have been actually, actually low and darkish,” he says.But, all through all of it, “in my head, it was me”, Brew says. “I nonetheless felt like me: Marc the dancer.” Two years after leaving rehab, he started dancing once more, having been put in contact with the incapacity activist and dancer Kitty Lunn by buddies within the US. Lunn invited Brew to go to her in New York, the place he went to ballet courses and “rediscovered dance once more”.The dance model he has since developed depends on unbelievable higher physique energy and full precision of motion. Colin Hambrook described Brew’s “flawless, virtuoso dance abilities” in a evaluate of Brew’s 2015 present For Now, I Am … for Incapacity Arts On-line. “Slight actions of the fingers, fingers, arms, torso and head are redolent with intention,” the critic wrote.Formidable work … Brew on stage in An Accident/A Life. {Photograph}: Filip Van RoeSometimes, however not at all times, Brew incorporates a wheelchair into his work. His “largest, most bold work thus far” is his most up-to-date mission, An Accident/A Life, a collaboration with choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui that tells the story of the automobile crash.For a lot of the efficiency, he’s on the ground, creating shapes together with his higher physique and lifting himself utilizing his arms to maneuver across the stage, solely introducing a wheelchair within the ultimate 5 minutes. “Navigating and shifting from one scene to the following with out having the assist of a chair, that’s fairly bodily demanding,” Brew says – nevertheless it made essentially the most sense for the story, provided that, when the crash occurred, he didn’t have a wheelchair. He was additionally taken with difficult viewers’s perceptions of disabled artists: “It made me take into consideration when the viewers is available in, if somebody doesn’t know me, or doesn’t know something about this story and this work, what do they suppose after they first see me on stage?”Brew by no means thought he would make a chunk in regards to the automobile crash, however the efficiency is “not simply in regards to the crash”, he says. “It’s about discovering a life once more.”When he first returned to dancing after the accident, although, “I needed to cease trying within the mirror as a result of I’d get pissed off,” he says. “I needed to only stand up and present everybody tips on how to transfer and tips on how to dance like I used to and I couldn’t.” It took him some time to grasp that “dance wasn’t about having lovely legs, turnout, flexibility, how excessive you jumped. Dance is about expressing myself by motion, and I might nonetheless do this.” Although it was fully completely different from the profession he had in thoughts beforehand – after spending a few years in South Africa, he had deliberate to maneuver to the UK or the Netherlands to bop with Rambert or the Nederlands Dans Theater – new prospects opened as much as him.For the reason that crash almost 30 years in the past, Brew has danced and choreographed everywhere in the world, shifting to London in 2003 to hitch Candoco, a dance firm that features disabled and non-disabled dancers. Now he has his personal dance ensemble, the Marc Brew Firm in Glasgow, the place he lives together with his companion, Matthew, and son Jedidiah, born by way of surrogacy two-and-a-half years in the past. Jedidiah is “the sunshine of our lives”, Brew says.For the reason that accident, “my identification has shifted”, the dancer says. “I’m a homosexual man, I’m now a father – I determine in many alternative methods.” Brew has reached the purpose the place he feels empowered by his incapacity. That’s to not say frustrations don’t nonetheless creep in: he nonetheless catches himself pondering, “I might simply stand up and simply do it and it will be a lot simpler.”However when these ideas come, he tells himself: “Marc, take a breath. You recognize you’ll discover one other means of doing it.” Being disabled has inspired him to be extra inventive and adaptable. “Issues don’t should be the way in which you suppose,” he says.Brew has by no means taken no for a solution: as a baby, he caught together with his dance courses, regardless of being informed he shouldn’t as a result of he was a boy. Later, he met these telling him he couldn’t dance as a result of he was disabled with the identical willpower. “How fortunate am I?” he says. “I’m nonetheless in a position to do what I like to do, and dance and share and create and carry out my work for different individuals, and to be an artist, despite the fact that I used to be informed I couldn’t.” Marc Brew and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s present, An Accident/A Life, is at Sadler’s Wells East theatre, London, from 25-27 September