A boy is growing up in rural Australia. It’s an unforgiving landscape of concrete, cars, and industry. There’s no place in this world for colour or for a boy who wants to dance. So when the boy discovers music – and starts to want to dance – he has to do it in secret, with only the sheep for company. One day, the boy discovers BMXs. And this second discovery simultaneously opens and then closes off a whole other world to him.

Boys Don’t Dance is billed as a dance show for children but don’t be fooled: it will bring tears to the eyes of the most cynical, steely-hearted adult audience. It features two performers, Ross Malloy as the boy when he’s young and Piotr Iwanicki as the boy when he’s older. Iwanicki uses a wheelchair and he uses it in an incredible array of ways in this show – the wheels come off, he sits atop it as if it were a ship’s bow, he balances on a single wheel, he rides it in the wake of Malloy’s BMX.

Marc Brew‘s choreography is vibrant, precise, urban, defiant, and lyrical. Both dancers exude an infectious charisma and their solos drip with wistful yearning. But the energy is turbo-charged when Iwanicki and Malloy dance together in an inventive duet that will snatch your heartstrings out of your chest.  A pop-tastic soundtrack of eighties hits (Azariah Felton) adds to the energy.

A sheet of wood suspended above the stage is used as a surface onto which illustrated scenes, a riot of colours, an animated narrator, and a BSL interpreter are projected. The same wood forms a ramp, used by the two men as a springboard for their dance. Embedded into the ramp is a TV screen and this is smartly used both to provide a window into the world the boy grew up in – all George Michael and Lipps Inc. – and for captions.

Boys Don’t Dance is a rare creature of a show: it’s entirely accessible. This isn’t the only reason you should go and see it but in this ill-built world, it’s an excellent additional reason. This is a show about a life-changing moment and about a life that refuses to be defined by that moment. Marc Brew offers a defiant answer to the all the people who told him he couldn’t dance as a boy – and reminds us with exuberant joy that dance is for everyone.

Boys Don’t Dance is at DB1 at Assembly @ Dance Base until Sun 23 Aug 2026