In 1971 photographer David Hamilton caused a stir by releasing a book, Dreams of a Young Girl, filled with nude, or almost nude, soft-focused and dreamy images of teenage girls on the brink of adulthood. Looking at them now, they still provoke an uneasy tension – the likes of Nabokov’s Lolita, and the films Leon and the Virgin Suicides, spring to mind.

Director Lies Pauwels, from Antwerp’s Hetpaleis, was inspired to create what is an arresting, funny and emotional response to Hamilton’s book. He has assembled an astonishing cast of 13-year-olds (13 of them) who perform alongside a bearded bodybuilder to create a fascinating piece of tanztheater that wryly provokes, startles, and induces tears.

Faux Greek columns decorate a stage alongside a life-size plastic horse and a canvas of a Romantic landscape below a rainbow of teddy bears and fairy lights. The cast marches towards us dressed as air hostesses, the clip-clop of their heels creating a bold statement of intent. They are in charge. Lined up along the barrier between stage and audience, they pass a microphone one by one to calmly introduce themselves as Gift, Prudence, Memory, Lovely – a series of words that recall the adjectives often used to describe girls. One voice takes over. in an instant, she veers from the rules of the auditorium’s invisibility to ask wider questions: ‘Are there any paedophiles here? We don’t mind. We just want to know what we’re up against,’ she says defiantly as her colleagues stare at us.

Over an hour and forty minutes we’re whisked through a series of episodes in which the cast transform from schoolgirls in pleated green skirts, to Harajuku Girls in white frills and brightly coloured wigs. The piece is littered with arresting images that burn into your brain: a tall blonde with a litter of yappy neon toy dogs on leads wrapped around her wrists; a chorus of hair swishing up and down in unison (Pina Bausch would be proud); limp bodies being whisked along the floor into a heap. One girl dances Sia’s Chandelier music video to perfection whilst the others look on dismissively puffing on e-cigarettes. Another shrieks and slaps the floor with such anguish that I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She channels the most tragic pain only a metre from my face. The moment brims with the emotional and physical suffering of thousands of young women and girls. This performance demands attention.

The body builder’s presence shifts from bodyguard, to father figure, to potential lover or abuser. It’s darkly hilarious to see an almost naked man flash his Adonis-like body to the crowd, seeking approval within a sea of young girls who are turning into objectified bodies themselves. He can flip them upside down with a wave of his hand but it’s when he tenderly lifts a young girl with a physical disability he becomes a tender carer. He enables her to fly, to live in the spotlight that for most of her life will be reserved for the ‘pretty’ girls. It’s a devastatingly beautiful moment, perfectly orchestrated. And she looks like she’s having a whale of a time. In fact, the entire company, with their coquettish glances and defiant stares, all seem to be having the time of their lives performing this ambitious and utterly compelling piece of work.