STRUT Dance’s annual Restore program will return to the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts next month with a double bill of contemporary dance works by Brooke Stamp and Ainslie Allan.
Presented by STRUT Dance in association with PICA, Restore will be staged in PICA’s Central Gallery from 15 to 18 July as part of PICA’s expanded second season for 2026. The program brings together Mickey by Brooke Stamp and Call, a world premiere by Ainslie Allan in collaboration with Annika Moses and Jo Pollitt.
Together, the works consider the body as a site of memory, transformation, connection and repair, and offer two distinct approaches to dance as a way of processing experience, holding tension and creating new ways of listening.
Call is grounded in the artists’ long-running performance improvisation practices, bringing together choreography, voice and live writing. The work seeks tenderness and connection amid the destabilisation of contemporary life, returning to repair and restoration as active, ongoing and communal processes.
Mickey, created by Brooke Stamp in collaboration with experimental sound artist Daniel Jenatsch, will receive its Western Australian premiere following its Melbourne debut at Rising Festival in 2025. Through improvised movement, voice and live-processed sound, the work investigates the emotional, psychic and physical labour of the dancer, revealing the subconscious impulses that shape choreographic practice.
The Restore double bill sits within a wider season of live performance at PICA exploring labour, legacy, care and resilience. Earlier in July, PICA will present On Labour: Four Live Works, featuring Grace Connors, Barbara Hostalek, Sukhjit Kaur Khalsa and Sarah Rodigari in a program spanning performance, poetry, live writing and socially engaged practice.
Dance also appears within Hostalek’s contribution to On Labour, which includes a participatory element from Ballet4Wellbeing founders Sandrine Delasalle and Aurelien Scannella, integrating a seated ballet sequence within the live performances.
PICA said the season would transform its galleries into spaces for movement, voice, reflection and exchange, with artists considering the conditions of contemporary life, from labour, precarity and survival to care, grief, endurance and collective responsibility.