Restore (CUDDLE by Harrison Ritchie-Jones & Bell by Adelina Larsson Mendoza)
STRUT Dance in partnership with PICA
Central Galleries, PICA
1 hour 30 minutes (including interval)

Restore is an annual mixed bill program presented jointly by PICA and STRUT Dance. It featured a new choreographic commission from a WA dance artist, and the West Australian premiere of an existing work from the Asia-Pacific.  

Amidst an industry-wide shortage of platforms for independent choreographers, Restore provides a vital opportunity to support and celebrate work that often wouldn’t be seen without such programs.

CUDDLE by Harrison Richie-Jones 

Early into an epic entrance from the back of the PICA building, Harrison Ritchie-Jones’s CUDDLE braked with a sudden and intimate pause. Slowly morphing into contact improvisation-like cuddles, Naarm-based dancers Ritchie-Jones and Michaela Tancheff rolled along PICA’s backrooms and into the Central Galleries. 
 
The audience sitting on-the-round evoked a wrestling ring, as serious eye contact and brilliant dance duels ensued – accompanied by a cacophony of squeaky toys bulkily hidden under the dancers’ clothes and heard on impact. Supported by cinematographer Babi Bertoldi, live-action footage spilled onto the Central Gallery’s walls – amplifying both the dancers’ exchanges and CUDDLE’s thoroughly enjoyable campness. 

While CUDDLE’s atmosphere played with large expressions of dramaturgical silliness and astonishing lifts, Tancheff and Ritchie-Jones’ partnering shared a compelling trust and synchronicity with undercurrents of gentleness – human tones often discouraged in various high velocity settings such as the boisterous performances of masculinity satirised in the work. 

Despite its many extraordinary physical acts, Ritchie-Jones’ mature and ambitious choreographic world-building had a beautiful effect of making these feats feel irrelevant amidst a soul-stirring yet unassuming expression of humanity. Hidden within CUDDLE’s bold overtones was a remarkably perceptive consideration of the audience – bringing us toward a broader, relatable journey of our collective need for softness and connection. It left the audience moved and humbled – I even noticed someone crying near me at the end. 

Bell by Adelina Larsson Mendoza 

Wooditjup-based dance artist Adelina Larsson Mendoza’s Bell quietly revealed a sparse but profoundly layered world of internal reckoning with lineage. Incremental movements built from the floor into wide circling, echoing partnered folk dances. Her repetitions evolved into a hauntingly expressionist but clearly directed cry into the ethers of memory and place – gathering invisible threads of understanding that expanded imaginatively but palpably around her. 

The audience moved freely between the Central Gallery and watching from the balcony above – creating seemingly endless dimensions of space that amplified Larsson Mendoza’s focused care in the middle. Witnessing her mindful cycles along a task-based score, I felt seen in the loneliness and largeness of finding one’s way back home through clouded, faraway lineages amid a colonial, Anglo-centric present. 

Bell was woven from years of personal research into family histories and the complex development of Swedish national identity in relation to dance. But after exhausting the openhanded beginnings of this ritual dance journey, Larsson Mendoza’s graceful flow effortlessly erupted into stilted throes. Anger, loss, and yearning surface – after journeying through these, moving at a pace determined by her own perspective, she is held by lineage again. 

With formidable intentionality, Larsson Mendoza eloquently conveyed homeland connections that endure amid one’s own multiplicity, modernity and fluidity. 

One rewarding connection between Restore’s programmed works was their strikingly humanising use – or rather, repurposing – of professional movement skills. Although performing with tremendous physical aptitude, both works used movement to speak to something beyond the dance sector’s traditional rinse and repeat of highly trained aesthetics. 

Within a sector saturated by institutional expectations to produce viscerally demanding works, Restore offered a much wider appreciation of dance as a medium of personal reinvention and reckoning. Despite their unique dance languages, the artists’ specificity of what they wanted to say deeply moved and comforted the audience of many community members beyond dance regulars. 

The evolution of contemporary choreography relies on challenging convention. Ritchie-Jones and Larsson Mendoza’s contrasting, inventive and deeply personal takes on this form were humbling, transformative and generous contributions to what contemporary dance means today – and a rare treasure to experience side by side. 

Restore was presented from 25 – 28 June at PICA.

For more information about the program, visit: 
https://pica.org.au/whats-on/strut-dance-restore/