About

Ayelen Parolin...

The pleasure, perhaps the obsession, of working on contrast, of going where she has not yet gone or, more accurately, of not doing what she knows how to do - with the added temptation of not doing what we expect of her.

A multitude of opposites, of contradictions... Not a spirit of contradiction, rather a taste for writing on the basis of contradictions. A taste for extremes too, playing at the ends of the spectrum. Mingled with dissatisfaction, which pushes her onward to continue.

Nature and culture have always been a fundamental driving question. This impulse most likely comes from her own “nature”, that of her own family history: a mixed-race Amerindian grandmother, a “hidden”, “mischievous” Amerindian origin, with which she undoubtedly seeks to connect, precisely because it was silenced. A silence that piqued her curiosity, her attachment, her desire to get closer to it. The idea of putting Ayelen, her middle name of Mapuche origin, center stage, comes from there.

From the word go, the question of identity, of the disparate plurality of identity, and of not smoothing out said plurality, was central to her approach. Her first solo, 25.06.76 (2003), a “collage” made up of her past choreographic experience, was proof of this; a first step.

The fact of not “smoothing things out”, not responding to the binary logic of our Western (capitalist) society fuels a vision/ reflection that I would gladly liken to a queer stance. Even if this is not a stance she takes. Even if, formally and aesthetically, this label is not one that would spontaneously apply at first sight. However, in her approach, there is an eminently queer essence.

Confronting rifts, turning them away and, at the same time, making them collide. Seeking to escape from education, formats, and formatting. Here again, not born of a spirit of contradiction, or a desire to stand out from the crowd, but to achieve full selfhood with all its contradictions, strengths and weaknesses. This is therefore a reaction to our ultra-liberal Western logic - and its imperatives of efficiency and performance. Not at all an individualistic approach, rather the will to advocate the complexity of the self, to allow the possibility of a plurality of “us”es, a more-or-less fluid, porous set of resolutely polymorphic “me”s.

Polymorphic (literally many forms/figures) is another term which fits her like a glove. The search for writing that is both deeply written into the body and into space, while steadfastly open to the present, to spontaneity - working to help the performers achieve a state that can transport them “elsewhere”.

In short, a quest for the absolute... one that is as crazy as it is utopian.

— Olivier Hespel (2020)

Biography

A choreographer and a dancer, Ayelen Parolin lives and works in Brussels. Born in Argentina, she arrived in Europe in 2000 and trained in Montpellier. She then began a career as a performer which led her to collaborate with Mathilde Monnier, Jean-Francois Peyret, Mossoux-Bonté, Alexandra Bachzetsis, Mauro Paccagnella and Louise Vanneste.

In 2003, she began pursuing her choreographic work. From her autobiographical solo 25.06.76 to the group piece WEG (2019) she created about twenty pieces, including DAVID (2011), Hérétiques (2014), Nativos (2016), Autoctonos (2017). The protean body of work thus composed makes contradictions its own, helping to shed light on the complexity of the self. An unclassifiable and unpredictable choreographer, she navigates between several universes and aesthetics, constantly attentive to exploring different parts of herself and probing what links us to others.

She is regularly invited to collaborate with national companies and has created pieces for the KNCDC – Korean National Contemporary Dance Company (2016), the Ballet national de Marseille (2017), and Carte Blanche – Norwegian National Contemporary Dance Company (2019).

Alongside her creations, Ayelen creates non-hierarchical laboratories to meet, share and exchange, which allow for testing new ways of working and communicating within a collective. The company also organises exchanges with the public, generally around its creations but also in the form of workshops with non-professionals. The company also emphasises transversal and transdisciplinary encounters, such as that with the composer and pianist Lea Petra or the physicist Pierre Dauby.

The company received the SACD prize all of its work in 2016 and the Prix de la Critique for Nativos in 2017. The same year, Ayelen became a Fellow of the Pina Bausch Foundation which awarded her a scholarship. From 2017 to 2020, the company is artist in residence with Charleroi danse (Belgium). Ayelen was also a laureate of Pépinières européennes pour jeunes artistes (XXL programme) in 2006.

Her work has travelled throughout Europe, North and Latin America, Asia and North Africa, and has been shown at Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Montpellier Danse, Actoral (Marseille), 100 dessus dessous festival (Paris), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Tanz im August (Berlin), Centquatre-Paris and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

The company is currently supported by Théâtre de Liège (2018-2022) and will be supported by Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles from 2022 on.