Against four beautiful panels bearing scenes of the Spanish countryside created by Marie Maresca and Fanny Gautreau, French choreographer, dancer and singer François Chaignaud takes to the stage as the Doncella Guerrera. An archetypal figure of a young woman disguised as a soldier, Chaignaud’s face is almost completely obscured by a helmet, his slight figure dwarfed by a pair of baggy pants. Encircled by four musicians – Jean-Baptiste Henry on bandoneon, François Joubert-Caillet on viola da gamba, Daniel Zapico on baroque guitar and theorbo, and Pere Olivé on percussion – Chaignaud embodies the young woman’s simultaneous uncertainty and determination with precise, whirling movements, underpinned by Spanish music of the 16th and 17th centuries.

François Chaignaud in Romances Inciertos, Un Autre Orlando

He sings as well, moving from head voice right down to blackest, most cavernous chest voice as he takes on and discards a variety of identities, chief among them an androgynous evocation of San Miguel and an Andalusian Roma woman by the name of Tarara, disappointed in love. Bathed in Anthony Merlaud’s washes of golden and blue light, the overall effect is both meditative and absorbing.

Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, the beguiling...