We think we know her, but she reveals another side. Wild, joyful, bursting with color. She is the revolution. If she were a muse carved in marble or painted on canvas, she would meet us with a playful gaze, feathers in her hair, a shimmering dress. If she were a poem, she would pull people in, one by one. If she were music, she would be the soundtrack of a parade like murga winding through the carnival streets of Buenos Aires. On stage, she turns into dance of shared energy and joy. A celebration. This is IRRESISTIBLE REVOLUTION by choreographer Ayelen Parolin, a coproduction of One Dance Festival.

This performance is an eruption of spontaneous, hybrid movement, because revolution needs no script and belongs to no genre. Instead of a barricade, the stage becomes a dance floor for twelve performers, a swarm of bodies woven together with a kaleidoscope of vivid lights, unconventional costumes, and layers of carnival music, dynamic rhythms, and sensual soundscapes. For her latest work, Ayelen Parolin begins with the idea of “the activism of pleasure”,  when a crowd feels united under the flag of utopia and anything is possible. Because activism should not be something special, but rather an everyday, sustainable practice for personal development, satisfaction, and fulfillment, and thus for social change.

Parolin draws and generates movement from seemingly incompatible sources: everyday gestures, popular culture, traditional festivities, trends from amateur videos, and dance phenomena emerging in unconventional spaces. Through this, she shapes a choreographic language of contradictory, hybrid, and ambivalent motions, each carrying the potential for surprise. This unpredictability gives rise to a choreography without rules, guided by the logic of a game - a fiction that becomes reality for those who choose to play it.

And so, this revolution does not arrive with darkness and storms, but with a dance step. It gathers like a roar and a swelling body of a crowd in the city square. It whirls through us like a wave of creative energy when we want to be heard, because it takes little to dance and just as little to protest. It becomes an avalanche of chaotic, awkward movements. A choreographic anarchy born from the joy of being together. Because revolution brings people together, and that alone is an achievement. This unity of contrasting individuals who declare their dream and celebrate it wildly and enthusiastically, sincerely and spontaneously, even if only for a brief moment.

Ayelen Parolin returns to Plovdiv with her latest production, which is scheduled to premiere in mid-April 2026 at the National Theater of Belgium, after presenting her show SIMPLE at the One Dance Festival 2023.

Ayelen Parolin draws creative energy from her childhood memories, which shaped her development as a dancer and choreographer. It is the excitement of the corso, public outdoor celebrations, and the carnival season in Buenos Aires, when she encounters the musical and performing genre of murga, and dreams of being part of the playing troupes called comparsas.

“For IRRESISTIBLE REVOLUTION, I envision a group of twelve performers letting themselves be carried away into a tangle of dances that are as disharmonious as they are exuberant. A choreographic ode to the act of being together based on what we are and what we can be. Inspired by the unbridled freedom of any gathering that allows for unpredictable drift, these twelve bodies will follow various irresistible impulses, untamable, rebellious movements to explore new ways of forming connections. Festive and jubilant dances will form the fertile ground for a utopia where collective excess and joy sketch the contours of another possible world.”

Ayelen Parolin

 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 of 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 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 by Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles from 2022 on.

Focus Belgium is realised with the support of Wallonie - Bruxelles International & Wallonie-Bruxelles Federation. The performance is created with the support of the National Culture Fund.