At the Opera House in September, Lewis Major's modern dance production "Triptych" features four segments from three award-winning works, performed by four dancers. The show is praised for its stunning lighting design by Fausto Brusamolino but criticized for lacking choreographic depth and failing to match the profound musical selections, particularly in Epilogue: Act 1 where Corsican polyphony outshines the dance movements.
Written by the local model on 2026-09-17,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
In the most true-blue modern dance biography you’ll ever read, Lewis Major describes himself as an enterprising sheep shearer-turned-award-winning-choreographer.
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Major → read → choreographer
“He is the only dance artist he’s ever heard of,” his biography quips, “who can reverse parallel park a tractor”.
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who → hear → tractor
I was slightly crestfallen that there were no sheep or tractors for Triptych, the Opera House season of Lewis Major Projects.
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I → be → Projects
Despite the name, Triptych contains four segments from three award-winning works, teasingly named Prologue, Epilogue: Act 1, Unfolding, and Epilogue: Act 2, performed by four statuesque dancers.
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Triptych → contain → dancers
Major was mentored by British choreographer Russell Maliphant and lighting designer Michael Hulls.
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Major → mentor → Maliphant
Here, he trips the light fantastic by pairing with award-winning lighting designer Fausto Brusamolino for Prologue and Unfolding — with the lighting emerging as Triptych’s five-star gem.
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lighting → trip → gem
Pivoting light beams, shining pyramids, oscillating particles, and swinging lasers all comprise a magical lighting design toolkit: encasing the dancers, slicing the air, and pulsing across the floor.
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beams → pivot → floor
Time is slowed and sped as light peels through the performance space, before that space melts into a headlong rush down a dizzying floor conveyor belt of light rays.
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space → slow → rays
This is no gaudy laser festival – the lighting is mostly white-toned on a black backdrop – but so vivid that it exhibits its own puckish personality, announcing itself as the fifth stage presence alongside Major’s dancers.
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it → exhibit → dancers
The choreography itself leans heavily on lighting to create complexity and sculpt the dancers’ bodies.
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choreography → lean → bodies
Prologue is the most successful: three dancers in black strike commanding poses as futuristic light prisms move up and down around them.
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prisms → strike → them
Unfolding’s lighting is even more kinetic — in one scene, a dancer seems balanced like a gymnast on a spinning beam of light — but the choreography bloats.
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choreography → seem → light
An intimate closing vignette, with the dancers stripping to their underwear, strains for a vulnerability it never earns.
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it → strip → vulnerability
Epilogue: Act 1 begins with enigmatic body painting before progressing to a duet.
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Act → begin → duet
The score is a keening sacred music lament by A Filetta, the all-male group specialising in Corsican polyphony, a 15th-century singing tradition nearly lost beyond recovery in the 1970s, only to resurrect as a hallmark of the Corsican separatist movement.
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score → specialise → movement
The ancient music’s profundity outpaces the duet, which – hindered by uncertain grips and laboured weight transfers – seems immature in comparison.
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which → outpace → comparison
It’s as if the choreography is trying a shortcut by borrowing the music’s numinous gravitas, but without finding a movement language equal to the music’s historical and spiritual weight.
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choreography → ’ → weight
Epilogue: Act 2 relies on theatrical use of ochre-coloured powder to give visual interest to a slow series of spins.
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Act → rely → spins
This may evoke deja vu for Sydney dance watchers familiar with Bangarra Dance Theatre: the effect feels familiar rather than revelatory.
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effect → evoke → Theatre
While the dancers are strong and the shapes beautiful, Triptych – with its stately pace and repeated lingering poses – never quite achieves mature choreographic depth.
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Triptych → repeat → depth
In the end, its lighting does much of the heavy lifting.
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lighting → do → lifting
The Aporia
