By the third section, the chairs have been lined up at the back of the stage and the choreography spreads horizontally across the space. One dancer remains seated and motionless, while the rest of the ensemble moves through fractal structures. By contrast, the fourth movement feels suddenly freer: the dancers change direction along diagonals and circles as they separate and recombine. Unison is recursively disrupted: one dancer arrives a fraction late, a phrase is altered. There is something almost euphoric about the way the choreography continually evades its own rules, just when we think we have grasped them. The music does the same, moving from a restless habanera to electronic noise and whistles. In the same spirit, a sudden blackout seems to bring the piece to a close, but then the dancers return for a brief coda that echoes the four movements.

For more than ninety minutes, the four women perform in front of us as themselves, as their own stage personas, sweating and tiring to exhaustion, far from the fictitious effortlessness often associated with virtuosity. “Rosas danst Rosas’s” strict choreographic structure never flattens the individuality of its interpreters. Its central paradox is a rigid grid inhabited by distinct personalities: impatient, vulnerable, ironic, indifferent, seductive or playful. Costumes recall rehearsal clothes or everyday dress: loose pale-blue tops, light mauve skirts, leggings, sheer socks and laced shoes. It is so Brussels that you could imagine the interpreters on the iconic Parvis de Saint-Gilles, wandering among the tables and chairs of its terraces. Low mirrors run along the sides of the stage, catching the dancers at an angle and reflecting fragments of their bodies. Within this sparse setting, emotion and meaning emerge without needing a narrative framework.