Doesn't 'The Returns' exclude you as much as the art snobs parodied by Forsythe?

When someone speaks in sentences with words that repeatedly rhyme with 'art' or in which the syllable 'art' keeps popping up, you have to adjust to a different logic than that of everyday communication. If it is also a woman dressed in bright red who pronounces those words eloquently and with many mannerisms, suggesting that she is hyper-sensitive to anything to do with art, your thoughts balance between: 'how terrible' and 'how funny'.

The world of choreographer William Forsythe engulfs you. 'The Returns' shows a catwalk. The fashion designer clique has made a mess of it. Along the walls, portraits with weird heads are carelessly hung. Mirrors, a sculpture and pizza boxes stand and hang chaotically, and the floor is littered with ping-pong balls and playing cards. And then there is the dressing table full of junk, at which the dialogues take place. Everything gets a place in the scenes that follow, but for now it feels like a ruin of excess. Forsythe parodies artistic circles, especially the fashion world with its hypes, its big money, incrowd ways and superficial glamour. The performance is an extreme parody and one wonders: does Forsythe want to deal with the untruthful lives of artists concerned only with the outside and of people who let it determine their status and image? Or is there still something of compassion or even sympathy in the way he turns vanity into mallowness?

What you feel with many of the scenes is exclusion. To these art circles you have no access as an ordinary person. You don't understand their language. The rhyming strings of words, which lead past inimitable associations through the rhyming process, mark this self-absorbed clique. Often, you cannot understand the text because the voices are distorted. What you see is extremely unreal. The grandeur of the art history behind us is praised, but in a swoon-worthy way that is easy to see through. People hide behind eccentric fashion creations, wigs, sunglasses, beards and ping-pong balls. Or maybe you should say: they give themselves a new face by putting it together with all kinds of objects and tools as they see fit, just as a portrait of Arcimboldo is composed of fruit.

There is dancing, often very beautiful and good, but the movements seem to be eroded by what goes on around the dressing table and by what is said. Associating the word 'art' rolls out of the mouth paired with the word 'joke'.

If at one point a dance dawns to the sound of bouncing ping-pong balls, it seems almost coincidental that this dance is very beautiful, as unintentional as the movements of masses of ping-pong balls. But soon flashy look-at-me movements creep in, pushing away the real beauty.

Wild scenes follow one another. Carnival, comedians, sea pirates, the show is of an excess that gets a bit heavy in the long run, however admirable the dancers and performers are.

Until the final fashion show begins. Now the overwhelming flow of creations pouring onto the catwalk starts to work. It is peerless what they have come up with. Everything from bubble wrap to tampons, a fan, a clothes drying rack, a butcher's cleaver, a nappy, all this and more can be used to create fashion, and everything becomes equally extravagant and crazy. It is as if they have squeezed their imagination to the last drop to make all this appear. The dazzling flow takes on something disarming and so engulfs you all the same. Make a feast of it, of all those vain appearances. Why not? It is also a part of life. And one can always leave the scene to become truly happy.

'The Returns' is by no means a show in which familiar images from the art world or art past return. An overwrought art merry-go-round spins by, which nevertheless becomes fun because fantasy seems to have no end. And isn't that a fine conclusion when it comes to art?

The Forsythe Company, 'The Returns'. Still to be seen:

Tue 24 & Wed 25 June, 8.30pm Westergasfabriek, Zuiveringshal West