“Panaches” evokes the idea of color, pride, and blending. Panaches explores how we create family from the margins. I like the idea of a mixture, of an encounter between fluids and between genders.

Am I in a marine world or a human one? Am I myself, or a sea slug?

With Panaches, premiered on March 12 at the Scène nationale de Chambéry, Pau Simon transforms the stage into an aquarium where, over the course of a solo performance, dance, documentary, and self-fiction come together.

Somewhere between a marine cabaret, an experimental protocol, and an intimate documentary, Pau Simon explores how queer parenthood can be invented, imagines the shifting of bodies from one species to another, and choreographically investigates every form of fluidity.

Water is not merely a theme: it becomes a material of sound, space, and dance. The piece seeks a physical poetics—to make water audible (the sound design was developed during a residency at the Ballet National de Marseille in December 2024 with Clément Vercelletto) and to create a setting in which dance engages in dialogue with a tangible aquatic presence.

“I activate magical spaces and symbols. In a white space, I pour water from one glass container to another: Lourdes water, test tubes, jerrycans, syringes… Panaches turns conception into an experimental ritual, somewhere between an ironic miracle and the imaginary protocol of a playful science.”

“Marine species possess an extraordinary capacity for fluidity and transformation… Parthenogenesis, sex changes, the fusion of organisms, remarkably unusual forms of gestation, I draw on that imaginary world. I transition into a sea slug, an animal capable of reproducing on its own or with others. I play within the fluidity of both animal life and gender.”

Beyond childhood and its capacity to invent other lives, particularly animal ones—Panaches draws on memories of The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, as well as the marine films of Jean Painlevé, a founding figure of scientific cinema.

“I embody a sea slug venturing into the abyss and its archaic world. This small, colorful creature possesses a strength that grants it immense power.”

Panaches

March 18, 2026 at KLAP Maison pour la danse, in Marseille.

A co-production of the CCN - Ballet National de Marseille and the Ballet National de Marseille.

More information: Pau Simon