BRUSSELS: In The Porcelain Project, Grace Ellen Barkey serves up a heap of utter nonsense. And gets away with it too! Fair’s fair, it is a gift Grace Ellen Barkey has always had. And she knows how to use it to produce colourful performances whose main attraction is their visual beauty and imagination. Her previous production, Chunking, was at the very least able to stimulate the senses. But at the same time the boundary between grotesque eroticism and vulgar anecdote was as thin as the flowery wallpaper on stage. By contrast, The Porcelain Project shows its dancing ability with verve, balancing between form and content. In this piece, nonsense multiplied by nonsense equals a meaningful result. Hundreds of pieces of crockery dangle on strings. The performance area is lined with irregular vases. There is decadence in the air. This is the perfect setting for a crazy royal drama overflowing with frivolity. We hop at top speed from one colourful masquerade to the next, each one graced by pompous strings and ditto choral dances and duets. The glorious romantic ballets of yesteryear pale in comparison to this performance. The fairytale picture box Barkey opens up for us screams of exaggerated kitsch, but at the same time whispers to us of a dark allegory on power, lust and desire. Even after a strong dose of pleasure pills, Shakespeare would never have been able to fantasise all this. The court, fitted out in crinoline and puffed breeches, moves lyrically and poetically. Although it initially all looks highly gracious and natural, the porcelain around them has a huge manipulative power. The stage design dictates the choreography and the figures that perform it. All this nimbleness and transparency is nothing more than an illusion. An illusion that gradually crumbles and deadens the dance. The king we also see running around on stage undergoes the same process of decay. In his speeches, megalomania transforms into meaningless lunacy. What makes The Porcelain Project so sublime is the integration and complete mastery of all the elements needed to get the performance off the ground. Music, stage setting and performers fuse organically into an energetic all-round experience that penetrates into your very fibres. This production is also a difficult exercise in touching the right chord, which lies hidden somewhere between the more obvious elements: earthy humour, anaemic sexuality and irony put on with a trowel. However, Barkey knows how to set the right degree of subtlety without detracting from the delightful over-the-top feeling. A crazy fairytale that effortlessly entices you into ink-black excess: it has rarely looked so credible.