Review: “Restore”, presented by STRUT Dance and PICA
Central Gallery, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA)
Thursday 26 June 2025
The 2025 iteration of “Restore” began ferociously and ended with a sigh.
Presented by STRUT Dance and PICA, this annual program is designed to showcase “innovation and cross-regional collaboration” in contemporary dance. “Restore” certainly delivered on the first, with a daring double bill – CUDDLE, by Melbourne based choreographer Harrison Ritchie-Jones and Bell by West Australian based choreographer Adelina Larsson Mendoza.
From its grappling outset CUDDLE is infused with dark humour; we meet two balaclava clad individuals (Ritchie-Jones and Michaela Tancheff) engaged in some kind of heist, perhaps… but are they collaborators or competitors?
To Nick Roder’s soundscape of eerie vocals the dancers roll into the space, locked in a struggling embrace, starkly lit by Ashley Buchanan. Surrounded by audience members, the square performance space feels like a wrestling ring but there’s comedy undercutting this ominous conflict. As the dancers wrestle and roll, their bodies emit sporadic squeaks, some long and moany, some short and sweet, all delightfully discordant with the unfolding scene.
When the dancers prise themselves apart it’s to punctuate the action with banter, through microphones that make their voices monstrous as they challenge one another to increasingly silly-sounding duels.
Though those comical provocations lead to dance battles peppered with light-hearted hip swivels, arabesques, and finger clicks, the results are also complex and dynamic. A cartwheeling swivelling lift – a repeated motif – sees Tancheff fly up and over Ritchie-Jones with a casualness that belies the athleticism of this manoeuvre. Other times Ritchie-Jones swings Tanchef like a carousel, weaving her in and out of his legs. There’s always a combative edge giving these aerobatic interactions extra zing.
A third person occupies the stage throughout, cinematographer Babi Bertoldi, whose live documentation is projected at either end of the space. Bertoldi’s close-up and bird’s-eye views provide physical and, at times, emotional insights into the action on stage.
On opening night of “Restore” Ritchie-Jones and Tancheff gave a compelling performance, marrying exhilarating physicality with a wonderfully laconic and darkly comedic sensibility. It’s easy to see why this work, which premiered in 2023, has been presented by the likes of Chunky Move and Sydney Dance Company.
Commissioned for this season, Adelina Larsson Mendoza’s solo Bell changed the mood completely with its pared back aesthetic.
Bell is part of Larsson Mendoza’s ongoing research project, Min Folkdans (My Folkdance), which “[draws] on [her] Swedish-Mexican family history, [unfolding] as a years-long personal, political, and historical meditation on migration, national formations and the sensory body.”
PICA’s Central Gallery, in which this season was staged, is a large hall framed by a mezzanine level balcony. While Ritchie-Jones pulled the audience in close, Larsson Mendoza pushed the audience back to the fringes so that the space felt suddenly vast, filled with Mark Haslam’s beams of light, haze and a scent reminiscent of church incense.
In contrast to this spaciousness, Bell is sparse. A long metal pole, perched between floor and wall, carves the space, a tiny cowbell – that belonged to Larsson Mendoza’s Swedish great grandfather – dangling from its top. In anonymous jeans and a tee Larsson Mendoza moves gently between sitting, standing, lying. Sia Ahmad’s score is also minimalist; in the distance a bell rings, a voice sings long, plaintive notes.
When Larsson Mendoza began manipulating various wooden poles, playing with spinning and clattering, the audience seemed to perk up, perhaps in anticipation of something more purposeful or dynamic, but the movement here continues minimalist, repetitive, even ponderous.
It’s the final section that delivers. Larsson Mendoza takes the long metal pole and holds it aloft, swinging the bell high above her head, its chiming filling the space like a singing bowl. In a single beam of smoky light this image is powerful.
Reading about Larsson Mendoza’s Min Folkdans project I learned that Bell has a predecessor, a solo titled Rite IV. Perhaps one needs to have seen this earlier work to understand the second. While I appreciate Bell’s commitment to concept, I wanted more moments like that final, totemic image.
-Nina Levy