Catch Workshop Faculty
Lewis Major
Lewis Major is an award-winning choreographer, director, and creative entrepreneur with a background in sheep shearing and a foreground in contemporary dance theatre. Growing up on a farm in the deep South of regional South Australia, not having set foot in a theatre until his late teens, he’s the only dance maker he knows who can both reverse parallel park a tractor and has travelled to all three axis of evil countries. He honed his skills in dancemaking over a decade spent working with seminal contemporary dance makers Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Russell Maliphant, Hans van den Broeck (Cie Soit/Les Ballets C de la B), Damien Jalet and Hofesh Shechter, amongst others. He was also a founding member of Aakash Odedra Company. Unabashedly audience driven, the ethos that drives his work is a local focusand a global outlook. His company Lewis Major Projects presents surprisingly real dance works in multiple mediums to diverse audiences across the world, having created 17 different works both independently and on commission and having presented them on 6 continents to widespread critical and commercial success. His work has been presented at Aarhus (Denmark); Adelaide Festival, Adelaide Festival Centre (Australia), Sadler’s Wells, The Royal Opera House, The Place (UK); Galway International Arts Festival (IE), Festival de Mayo (Mexico); La Comete, Centre des Arts Enghien Les Bains, La Maison de la Musique de Nanterre, Maison des Arts de Creteil (France); Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg (Luxembourg), PUSH Festival (Canada); Impulstanz Festival, Ars Electronica Festival (Austria); TED Global (Brazil) and TEDx London; Esplanade Theatres (Singapore); Lyric Theatre (Hong Kong) and the Baryshnikov Art Centre (NYC). Lewis was a semi-finalist in the 2020 Keir Choreographic Competition and was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Independent Dance at the Australian Dance Awards in 2019 and 2020.
Emma Martin
Emma Martin started out as a ballet dancer. As a choreographer her work spans dance, theatre, opera and film. She creates multidisciplinary work often with live music and creating distinct visual universes with each piece, always with a raw style of dance as its heart. She graduated from the John Cranko School, in Stuttgart, and has a BA in Russian and Drama & Theatre Studies from Trinity College Dublin. As a choreographer she made her first show in 2010, and now produces work through her company United Fall since 2018. Her previous works include King/ Shrine, Night Dances, Birdboy, Orfeo ed Euridice, Girl Song, Dancehall, Tundra. She has presented her work at Dublin Theatre Festival, Dublin Dance Festival, Galway International Arts Festival, Cork Midsummer Festival, Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival, Zürcher Theater Spektakel, Tanec Praha, Edinburgh International Children’s Festival, Sadlers Wells, Edinburgh Fringe, Aesthetica, and Dublin International Film Festival. Emma’s work plays between pedestrian and virtuosity, making dances that move through textures and physical states, so that the rough, delicate, gestural and wild can all exist in the same moment.
Hannah Shepherd
Hannah Shepherd started her physical training with gymnastics, trampolining and bungee trampolines. She trained at London Contemporary Dance School gaining an undergraduate and postgraduate degree. Hannah then went on to perform on stage and tour extensively with Hofesh Shechter Company, becoming a full time member in 2009-2022. She performed in HSC’s: In Your Rooms, The art of not looking back, political mother, Political mother choreographers cut, SUN, Orphee at Eurydice (Royal Opera House production), Barbarians, Grand finale and Double murder. She often still performs and works with the company for particular projects. Hannah recently worked on the critically acclaimed dance theatre production of Ruination, co-produced by Lost dog and The Royal Opera House. Hannah works closely with Lost Dog on other projects and teaching for the company. Hannah is an experienced improviser and dance/movement practitioner, she had taught dance and movement workshops internationally for many years. In addition to stage experience she has been working as a creature/movement specialist for film and TV, including the Netflix series Black mirror, Aquaman 2 by DC studios and feature film April.
Seppe Baeyens
Dancer and choreographer Seppe Baeyens regards intergenerationality and inclusion as essential conditions for showing dance in its most human and essential form. In his productions he mixes professional and non-professional dancers and actors. Baeyens searches for new artistic working methods, spread over a long period of time, based on co-authorship with the participants. His productions are not so much about individual expression, the symmetrically performed movement or the harmonic choreography, but the honest and authentic connection between the dancers during the performance. Accordingly, the live music and visual design play an important guiding and supporting role. The dance community around choreographer Seppe Baeyens is called Leon.
