If ever there was a season to resurge your talent, spring is that season. Chrissie Parrott knows this. She’s currently preparing to make a long anticipated return to the stage, doing what she was known for all those years ago: dancing.

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This time though it’s a pastiche of her own language of dance, one interpreted by choreographer Jo Pollitt. The new work, Re-Render, sees Parrott pick up her dancing shoes for the first time since 1996.

But what makes this new piece more exciting is the scope of story it tells. It’s not just another exploration of human emotion through dance: it’s the exploration of Parrott’s own career, a veritable greatest hits from her choreographical back catalogue.

‘Jo has a particular style of coaxing out choreographic ideas through improvisation and through text and interviews and those sorts of things,’ Parrott told OUTinPerth. ‘So…with her knowledge of my work as well as talking to me a lot and me improvising over weeks and weeks and weeks, we’ve actually honed it down to quite a refined set of moves which are very articulate.’

Re-Render is told in three parts, the first exploring the 80-plus pieces of choreography, creating a ladder of sorts bridging the past to the present. The second part is a duet with one of Parrott’s most irrepressible muses, Claudia Alessi

‘She was a muse of mine when I was the choreographer at the Chrissie Parrott Dance Company, so she also has a lot of that residue in her body. We did this duet where we both kind of responded to each others memories of certain things, and that also goes back in 10 year lots, from 78 to 88 to 98 to 2008 and 2018, into the future. So that’s a prevailing duet.’

The final section is called Submerged, for which Pollitt has written a piece of prose to which Parrott improvises dance and movement. ‘What’s happened ultimately is I think it’s only a 15 minute work. When we workshopped it it was a 45 minute piece so we’ve honed it right back.

‘And I still have some blocks where I improvise completely, which is a little bit unnerving, for someone who was a ballet dancer, where everything’s set. But also being the dancer again has been a brilliant thing for me.

‘It’s joyful and it’s daunting but Jo is a very clever, sensitive, intelligent choreographer, so she’s worked with me in a particular way so that I feel comfortable in the work. Because at first I was like “Oh my god, crazy!”.

‘But I heard something the other day, and it resonates with me, and that is that when you’re performing, the last think you do is think about what the audience are actually seeing; it’s more about what you’re feeling as a performer, and I think for a while there I was the opposite – I was thinking “How am I going to look?” and “What will people expect?” and that was scary. But now I’ve taken myself into another place, and I’ve decided that I’m going to be inside the work, and try to forget that feeling of joy and some sadness from that history, and approach it as an actor, not a dancer.’

The work itself appears as part of Counter Point, a series of new works being held by STRUT dance at His Majesty’s Theatre. This two night season will not only feature Chrissie Parrott but will also feature Didier Thèron and The WA Ballet’s Cass Mortimer Eipper.

In the meantime lovers of dance can indulge in Parrott’s other work, The Garden, which has opened at the Moores Building in Fremantle. It’s a collaboration with Jonathan Mustard which inhabits both floors of the building, filling it with sound, dance and holograms.

Which ever way you look at it though – be it Re-Render or The Garden – Parrott is back in form. But is Parrott’s wild return to the stage the beginning of a new chapter, one which will see her soak up the limelight more?

‘No, I don’t think so,’ she confided. ‘I always fancied myself as an actor at some point, but that never happened, probably because I got so caught up in creating my own work; you don’t put yourself out there as a performer. No, I don’t think it will be the beginning.’

Re-Render appears as part of STRUT dance’s Counterpoint, which appears at His Majestys for two nights only: November 13 and 14. Tickets are available now through www.bocsticketing.com.au. The Garden appears at The Moores Building until November 15. Tickets are available now through www.performinglineswa.org.au.

Scott-Patrick Mitchell