Finding a sense of home through dance: The story of Mudh and Locale
What does home mean to you? A place, a person, a memory, or simply the feeling that you belong? For Torres Strait Islander choreographer Sonya Stephen, these questions have become the starting point for Mudh, a contemporary dance work bringing women from diverse cultural backgrounds together to share their stories through movement. This November, the project reaches a new chapter as it comes to Bina Parkland in Balga, growing from a community-led creative process into a free outdoor performance for everyone to experience.
Home means something different to everyone. It might be the place you grew up, the people who make you feel safe, the traditions you carry with you, or somewhere new that gradually begins to feel like your own.
These ideas sit at the heart of Mudh (meaning Home), a contemporary dance project created by choreographer Sonya Stephen. Bringing together women from First Nations, migrant and broader community backgrounds, the work explores nurture, belonging and connection through movement, storytelling and shared creative practice.
But Mudh is about more than what happens on stage. It is also the story of what can happen when artists are given the time, support and opportunity to work alongside communities, and what can grow when people are invited to create something together.
It is a journey that began through STRUT Dance’s Locale program and, over the past 18 months, has developed into a work that will soon be shared with audiences across Perth.
An idea begins to take shape
For Sonya, dance has long been a way to communicate beyond words.
Born and raised in Port Hedland, she began dancing at the age of eight before continuing her training in Sydney. Her career has since taken her across a range of community and performance projects, working with people from different backgrounds and using movement to explore stories, identity and shared experience.
Her approach is grounded in the belief that everyone has a story to tell, and that creative movement can help people find ways to express experiences that might otherwise be difficult to put into words.
It is an approach that sits naturally within Locale, STRUT Dance’s community-focused initiative supporting artists to develop projects in collaboration with local communities.
Rather than beginning with a finished performance and finding an audience for it, Locale creates space for artists to spend time with communities, build relationships and develop work that responds to the people and places involved.
This provided the opportunity to explore an idea around home and belonging with women whose experiences are often underrepresented in the arts.
What does it mean to feel at home? How do our experiences of family, culture, migration and displacement shape that feeling? And how can we share those experiences with others?
These questions became the foundation for Mudh.
From workshops to a shared experience
In 2025, with support from the City of Stirling and Minderoo Foundation, Sonya began developing the project through a pilot series of workshops across the City of Stirling.
The process culminated in a community showing at Nollamara Community Centre, offering an early glimpse of what Mudh could become.
It was an important first step, but the project wasn’t finished there.
In 2026, Sonya returned to the work, leading a further series of taster and recruitment workshops across Perth. In July alone, 15 workshops brought together more than 50 participants, with sessions hosted at Edmund Rice Centre WA, MercyCare and ISHAR Multicultural Women’s Health Service.
These workshops created opportunities for women to connect through creativity, explore movement and consider what home means to them.
The experiences informing Mudh are varied. They include memories of family and culture, journeys of migration and displacement, moments of fear and uncertainty, and the strength and hope found in building a life and a sense of belonging.
Through the creative process, these individual experiences become part of a wider conversation.
Dance offers a way to explore these ideas without requiring everyone to share the same language, background or experience. Movement can communicate a feeling, a memory or a relationship in ways that words alone sometimes cannot.
And importantly, the project creates space for women to participate on their own terms. Being part of a creative community doesn’t have to look the same for everyone, and the broader Mudh experience makes room for different ways of contributing and sharing.
At its core, the work is about creating connections between people who might not otherwise have the opportunity to come together in this way.
Why Locale matters
The journey of Mudh is also a story about the role of artists in their communities, and what can happen when creative development is given room to grow.
Locale is a STRUT Dance initiative with Community Cultural Development at its core. Locale was conceived by STRUT co-directors James O’Hara and Sofie Burgoyne in collaboration with choreographer Annette Carmichael. Following on from the success of STRUT’s decade of site responsive performances in Boorloo, and Annette Carmichael’s most recent epic creation, The Stars Descend, Sofie and James met with Annette to ask the question “what’s next?”. As a nationally recognised leader in creating contemporary performance with regional communities Carmichael delivers projects that provide positive health impacts for participants, as well as audience. So they teamed together and thought, instead of more familiar notions of bringing the city to the regions, Locale will bring the highly developed knowledge of Carmichael from regional Australia to the city.
Locale delves deeper into “site”, not only architecture, but a culmination of cultural history, people and the activities that are undertaken there. The program supports artists, local governments, partner organisations and people from diverse backgrounds to work together through creative practice, creating opportunities for artists to engage with communities beyond traditional arts settings.
This is an important shift in how we think about the relationship between art and audiences.
Not every creative project needs to begin in a theatre, gallery or rehearsal studio. Sometimes it begins with a conversation, a workshop or an idea that needs time to develop. Sometimes the most meaningful part of a project is not simply the finished work, but the relationships and connections that form along the way.
Through Locale, twenty artists from across WA were supported to take part in a three part professional development workshop series with Carmichael, learning skills to take their artistic practice outside of traditional arts spaces and engage with their area of habitation with collaborators who are not practicing artists. Three of these artists were supported to develop a pilot project, Giorgia Schijf in the City of Belmont, Mackenzie Brown in the City of Fremantle and Sonya Stephen in the City of Stirling. Sonya Stephen’s work was then selected to continue in its development, now culminating in the community event Mudh.
For Mudh, that means the project has grown through its engagement with women across Perth, creating opportunities for people who may not traditionally see themselves reflected in contemporary dance or feel that the arts are a space for them.
It also places First Nations cultural leadership at the centre of the process, drawing on Sonya’s Torres Strait Islander background and cultural perspective.
The result is a project that brings together artistic practice and community connection, with the potential to create a lasting impact beyond the performance itself.
And that is what makes the journey from the initial workshops to the public presentation so significant. The performance is not an isolated event. It is the next stage of a process that has already brought people together, and an opportunity to invite a much wider community into that experience.
Bringing Mudh into the landscape
This November, Mudh will take another step forward as it moves into the open landscape of Bina Parkland in Balga.
Presented by STRUT Dance, the free outdoor performance will bring an ensemble of women from diverse cultural backgrounds together among the Balga trees, with dancers moving within, across and in front of the park’s beginner BMX track.
It is a setting that offers a different way to experience contemporary dance.
Rather than watching from the familiar rows of a theatre, audiences will gather within the park itself. The surrounding landscape becomes part of the experience, with movement, music and the natural environment coming together to create something that feels connected to the place.
An evocative original soundscape by Perth-based composer Andy O’Neil will accompany the work, adding another layer to the relationship between the performers and their surroundings.
The location is meaningful, too. Bina Parkland sits on Mooro Country and is a living landscape shaped by the community, including the planting of more than 14,000 trees, shrubs and groundcovers.
This makes it a special place to bring the work, as Sonya she describes it, the park carries a living spirit, offering a place to gather, embody and share stories. The landscape becomes more than a backdrop. It is part of the experience of Mudh, connecting the work to the people and place in which it unfolds.
It also opens the door for people who might not ordinarily attend contemporary dance. You don’t need to know anything about dance, or feel comfortable in a traditional theatre, to come along. The invitation is simply to gather, watch, listen and experience the work in your own way.
As Sonya puts it, Mudh is more than a performance. It is an invitation to pause, feel and share a moment with others, something to experience with your heart as much as your eyes.
More than a performance
The November event is designed to be a gathering for the wider community, not just a performance to sit and watch.
This relaxed, family friendly setting reflects the spirit of the project itself: welcoming people from different backgrounds and creating an opportunity to connect through a shared experience.
For the women involved, Mudh offers a way to bring their experiences into the public realm, sharing stories that are often absent from mainstream arts spaces. For audiences, it is an opportunity to encounter those stories through movement and to reflect on the many different ways people understand home.
There is no single answer to the question at the centre of the work. Home might mean family, culture, memory, land or a sense of safety. It might be something we inherit, something we carry with us or something we build with others.
By bringing these different perspectives together, Mudh creates space for those experiences to sit alongside one another, without needing to be the same.
A new chapter for Sonya, and for Locale
Bringing Mudh to Bina Parkland marks the continuation of Sonya’s creative journey that began with an idea and developed through time spent working with communities.
For STRUT Dance and Locale, it demonstrates what can emerge when artists are supported to develop work in close connection with the people and places around them.
The project has moved from its initial workshops and community showing in 2025, through a further period of development and engagement in 2026, to a public performance that brings its ideas into a shared community space.
Along the way, it has created opportunities for women from different backgrounds to connect through creativity, contribute their experiences and become part of a collective work.
That journey is a reminder that the value of community-engaged art cannot always be measured by the final performance alone. It also lies in the opportunities created, the relationships built and the stories that are given room to be heard.
Locale makes space for this kind of work to develop, supporting artists to engage with communities in meaningful ways and helping bring new voices and perspectives into the cultural life of Perth.
And Mudh is one example of what that can look like in practice.
This November, the work will find its next audience under the trees at Bina Parkland. It will be a chance to experience contemporary dance in an unexpected setting, but also an opportunity to come together around something that connects us all.
Because wherever we come from, and however we define it, we all have our own idea of home.
Join us at Mudh (Home)
Created by Torres Strait Islander choreographer Sonya Stephen and presented by STRUT Dance as part of the Locale program.
When: Friday 13 & Saturday 14 November 2026
Time: Activities from 5pm, performance at 6.30pm
Where: Bina Parkland, Beginner BMX Track, Balga
Cost: Free
Bring your family, friends and community, and experience Mudh together.
