Dance: Simple

Giving the illusion of simplicity can be the most difficult of tasks. It's a challenge that choreographer Ayelen Parolin has successfully met with Simple, a piece that opts for minimalism. Three dancers in tight-fitting pastel-coloured leotards perform a strange choreography in front of a colourful wall.

Beneath their serious demeanour, the performers mix genres, combining movements borrowed from diverse and unrelated registers to compose a clown show as children might do. A pas de trois, the preserve of classical ballet, precedes a right hook, an uppercut or a Charlie Chaplin-style mime session. Gone is the literal interpretation. Dance gives way to the zany and the burlesque.

The Argentine choreographer feigns minimalism to better emphasise the eccentricity of her writing. She can afford to do so thanks to the virtuosity of her dancers: Baptiste Cazaux, Piet Defrancq and Daan Jaartsveld, true chameleons capable of switching between all registers. On the large back wall, their costumes look like they have been painted in watercolours. The members of the trio move around, like pigments coming to life.

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