When you’ve been around as long as Dries Van Noten, aesthetic ease is a given. But it’s how this Belgian continues to push his own boundaries that keeps us so fixated.

We were presented with a moody ballet in an underground basement behind the Grand Palais, models stalking the runway in draped robes, scoop necks and cross-body ties, grounded in a chalky take on the dance shoe. 

The boys were beautiful (and exquisitely cast) but there was something about their driving steps that suggested something heavier, more psychological at play. The severe, oft-mechanical nature of the dance itself, or perhaps the physical distortion its exertion inflicts upon the human body.

It was also present in the repetitive beat they rode in time to, pulled from the notes written by Belgian composers Thierry De Mey and Peter Vermeersch in the early 1980s to accompany Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s Rosas Danst Rosas.

Swift and sensual, this was a moment that will remain burned in the retinas of those lucky enough to have witnessed it.