^{Cover Image: Poetry that is projected in Ainslie Allan’s work CALL. Photography by Rebecca Mansell.}

While no live performance is ever exactly the same twice, there’s something exhilarating about watching a work that is designed to change and evolve each time it’s presented; a work that is a gift for this specific audience.  

So it felt fitting that STRUT Dance programmed a contemporary dance double bill grounded in improvisation practices for the 2026 iteration of Restore, a season of innovative new or recent dance works presented annually in PICA’s Central Gallery. 

^{The layers of Allan’s CALL. Image by Rebecca Mansell.}

Presented in the round, those layers emanate from a gathering of giant wooden thread spools at the centre of the gallery, functioning as both installation and sound/projection/editing desk. 

As Moses sings wordless, chiming notes, Allan responds in kind, their body extending and unfolding. Gomes writes notes that are passed to Pollitt, who writes and edits poetry that is projected, dancing across screens at either end of the gallery. The projected text appears on Allan’s moving body like tattoos.  

Allan twists, swims and sings through a forest of letters, while Moses contorts their own vocalisations into ghostly howls. The other performers provide sporadic vocals; Moses mixes the sounds live so that the gallery fills with echoing cries. Allan bounces off the walls, arms outstretched, face ecstatic.  

While this may sound chaotic, there’s a cleanness to the aesthetic that is soothing. The performers are clad in simple panelled white tunics over jeans, the patches echoing a textile banner that hangs at one end of the space. On the screens, punctuation gently rains, washing monochrome dashes over a white page.  

Though the work comes with a content warning about loud sounds, CALL feels like an immersive meditation, an antidote to the uncertainty characterising this moment in our collective history.  

In contrast, Mickey, choreographed and performed by Naarm/Melbourne- and Yugambeh/Gold Coast-based dance artist Brooke Stamp with experimental composer Daniel Jenatsch, is deliberately unsettling and darkly humorous.  

Described as an opportunity to see inside “the usually closed space of a rehearsal studio so we can witness the dancer at work”, Mickey is all too relatable for anyone who has experienced creative block.  

Initially it’s hard to see how this is going to be engaging viewing; Stamp’s gestures are timid and uncertain, ideas discarded before they’ve been explored.  

But as her uneasy murmurings and utterings are recorded, then manipulated, warped and accompanied by pre-recorded sound (live on stage by Jenatsch), the aural representation of her uncertainty becomes a springboard for movement that runs the gamut from striking to slapstick to sensual. Stamp and Jenatsch have a wonderful rapport, and the outcome is gloriously unhinged. 

A favourite scene sees Stamp strut down the length of the gallery. With the audience seated on either side, it’s redolent of a catwalk, revving sounds from Jenatsch creating a sense of energy building as she poses theatrically, her gestures becoming comically phallic. A pitiful cry of “I lost my keys” is incongruous yet all too familiar.  

There are various dance references for those in the know; the inclusion of a Graham pleading amid robotic groans and gunning engines is particularly entertaining.  

Lighting designer Matt Adey’s washes of intense colour – ultra violet, fluorescent lime, rose pink – add to the feeling that we’ve entered some kind of dystopian realm where nothing will ever be found or finished.  

Mickey’s conclusion, however, is surprisingly and satisfyingly poignant, and a fitting end to a bill that felt pleasingly cohesive with its common thread of combining improvisation practices across disciplines.