Triptych

Lost with Psycho Thriller Ghosts

Triptych is characterised by a hyperrealist narration that turns the whole performance into a psycho-thriller-illusionistic image sequence in line with a David Lynch’s film. In Peeping Tom’s work, you can’t surrender to a dreadful everyday life, where little or no chance of redemption and salvation is possible. From the very beginning, the audience is thrown into a stage setting that could look familiar: it represents a lounge, with the lights of minimal intensity which prelude a non-ordinary event. At first it can be difficult to follow the action on stage with one’s eyes only. The performers emerge from the darkness and disappear into it again.

Triptych is also an engaging spectacle. The freneticism, the madness, the disruption of the organic synergy, the perfectly built structure begins to crumble from its very foundations. In the semi-darkness of the living room, a man-woman duet emerges. A third performer, who appears to be the waiter, wipes some blood from the floor. The rag comes to life as if possessed and begins to move on its own. The audience immediately realizes they are at the scene of one murder (or more). The doors of the room open and close by themselves. In the duets, characterised by powerful entanglements, one of the main elements is an elastic use of the back, particularly by the female dancers. Games of illusion, such as the head turning 180 degrees in relation to the body or books moving without any visible wire.

If the first scene (The missing door) is a living room, in the second (The lost room) the stage represents a bedroom. Interestingly, the deconstruction of the first scene and the reconstruction of the second one takes place with the curtain open: technicians and dancers are all engaged in this collective process of disassembly and reassembly. The construction of the scene is a shared action and exactly for this reason creates in the audience a kind of delighted disorientation, which leads one to rethink where does the choreography ends?

The third scene (The hidden floor) is preceded by an intermission but like before something happens on the stage. Without any formal announcement, the audience has the choice of either leaving or staying in the hall. I chose to stay. The scene change begins again, leading to the creation of a house exterior and a swimming pool. A performer accompanies this second stage deconstruction and reconstruction by singing a melancholic melody while sitting next to an old man. Even not remembering the whole lyric, it sounded like: “Something happened and I can’t remember it”. This is perhaps the most touching moment of the performance, devoid of any pretense and acrobatics/illusionism. The third part is dominated by plunges into the pool, an atrocious wind that displaces the dancers, mountains of clothes that submerge to the point of almost suffocating the dancers, fire that erupts.

Peeping Tom presents again a captivating and engaging show. The hyper-illusionistic, the madness, the horror into the everyday, the disruption of the daily through illusion which makes the quotidian terrifying. The built stage structure is synchronized with the performer at the very most. A relevant partner to the stage work is the musical composition, which is at the complete disposal of the dramaturgy of the scene. The choreographic language is steep and breathtaking. It combines extreme abstract man/woman duets, where often the women’s bodies are never touching the ground, to theatrical gestures. The dancers’ bodies are constantly tossed about in various extreme positions, with their backs stretched without respite. Despite the stage context and the costumes being clearly theatrical, Peeping Tom’s performers are conceived as human bodies more than theatrical characters.

Curiously enough, the name Peeping Tom derives from its meaning of “peeping tom: voyeur”. In fact, for the company founders Gabriella Carizzo and Franck Chartier, a choreographer is a voyeur in the sense that they create a choreography and theatrical gestures from constantly observing movements and gestures from real people.

In Triptych we, as audience members, are at the same time observers of stage actions and the main recipients of this dance with ghosts that takes place a few meters away from us.

The show was played within OsterTanzTage 2023
Staatstheater Hannover
Opernhaus, Opernplatz 1 – Hannover (Germany)
Sunday 9 April 2023, 19.30

Triptych: The missing door, The lost room and The Hidden Floor
by Peeping Tom
concept and direction Gabriela Carrizo, Franck Chartier
performance Konan Dayot, Fons Dhossche, Lauren Langlois, Panos Malactos, Alejandro Moya, Fanny Sage, Eliana Stragapede, Wan-Lun Yu
artistic assistance Thomas Michaux
sound dramaturgy Raphaëlle Latini
sound composition and arrangements Raphaëlle Latini, Ismaël Colombani, Annalena Fröhlich, Louis-Clément Da Costa, Eurudike De Beul
light design Tom Visser
set design Gabriela Carrizo, Justine Bougerol
costume design Seoljin Kim, Yi-chun Liu, Louis-Clément Da Costa
confection costumes Sara van Meer, Lulu Tikovsky, Wu Bingyan (intern)
technical coordination Giuliana Rienzi, Pjotr Eijckenboom (creation),
technical engineers Bram Geldhof, Ilias Johri (lights), Tim Thielemans/Jonas Castelijns (sound)
stage management Thomas Dobruszkes (stage manager), Clement Michaux, Kato Stevens (stage assistants)
production interns Lisa Gunstone, Robin Appels
based upon Adrift, created with the dancers of NDT I: Chloe Albaret, Lydia Bustinduy, César Faria Fernandes, Fernando Hernando Magadan/Spencer Dickhaus, Anna Hermann, Anne Jung, Marne Van Opstal, Roger van der Poel, Meng-ke Wu, Ema Yuasa/Rena Narumi, with artistic assistance by Louis-Clément Da Costa, Seoljin Kim and Yi-Chun Liu
production Peeping Tom
co-production Opéra National de Paris, Opéra de Lille, Tanz Köln, Göteborg Dance and Theatre Festival, Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, deSingel Antwerp, GREC Festival de Barcelona, Festival Aperto/Fondazione I Teatri (Reggio Emilia), Torinodanza Festival/Teatro Stabile di Torino – Teatro Nazionale (Turin), Dampfzentrale Bern, Oriente Occidente Dance Festival (Rovereto)
created with the support of the Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal Government.