Belgian Dance Theater Provocateur Peeping Tom Brings 32 RUE VANDENBRANDEN to BAM

Belgian dance theater collective Peeping Tom makes its US and BAM debuts with 32 rue Vandenbranden, winner of Britain's prestigious Olivier Award for best dance performance in 2015. Five dancers and a mezzo-soprano inhabit an unstable, surreal universe, governed by their own laws of time and space. The performers contort, bend, jerk, and levitate in dizzying scenes of hypnotic movement to the sounds of Bellini, Stravinsky, and Pink Floyd. Inspired by the film The Ballad of Narayama by Shohei Imamura, which depicts the legendary traditions of a remote Japanese village community where the elderly are sent away to die on Mount Narayama, 32 rue Vandenbranden is a hyperreal collision of jaw-dropping physicality, cinematic realization, and macabre slapstick.

Under a wide-open sky, inhabitants of an isolated mountain-top community grapple with a blurred reality and their visceral responses to inescapable loneliness. When the boundary between reality and imagination blurs, the characters lose themselves in a haunting world where humanity and humor punctuate their isolation. The production features performers Jos Baker, Eurudike De Beul, Marie Gyselbrecht, Hun-Mok Jung, Maria Carolina Vieira, and Seoljin Kim.

Peeping Tom is a Belgian dance theater company, founded in 2000 by Gabriela Carrizo and Franck Chartier. The Brussels-based company's trademark is a hyperrealistic aesthetic in common settings-a garden, a living room, a cellar, two trailer homes in a snow-clad setting, and a decrepit theater. Peeping Tom has created works in collaboration with Nederlands Dans Theater, the Gothenburg Opera, and the actors of Residenz Theater in Munich. The company is the winner of a number of international awards, among them the Prix du Meilleur Spectacle de Danse de l'Année for Le Salon (2005), the Mont Blanc Young Directors Award at the Salzburg Festival (2007), the Patrons Circle Award at the International Festival of Arts in Melbourne, and the Olivier Award for best dance performance in 2015 (32 rue Vandenbranden). The production Vader received a Barcelona Critics' Award in 2014. Earlier this year the company premiered its latest production Kind (Child), the final installment of a family trilogy that started in 2014 with Vader (Father), followed by Moeder (Mother) in 2016.

Gabriela Carrizo started out as a dancer and choreographer in the Ballet de l'Université in Cordoba under the tutelage of Norma Raimondi. At the age of 19 she moved to Brussels, where she worked with Caroline Marcadé. In 1993 she created her first solo, et tutto sara d'ombra et di caline. She has since collaborated with artists and companies including Alain Platel, les ballets C de la B, Koen Augustinians, and Needcompany. On Platel's lets op Bach she worked together with Franck Chartier, with whom she founded the dance theater company Peeping Tom. Carrizo shares the duties of artistic director of Peeping Tom with Chartier.

Franck Chartier started dancing at the age of 11. His mother sent him to study at the Rosella Hightower School in Cannes, where he focused on classical ballet. At the age of 19 he left for Brussels and joined the Ballet du XXème Siècle of Maurice Béjart and subsequently worked with the company in Switzerland until 1989. This was followed by a collaboration with Angelin Preljocaj on a production for the Paris Opera, Le spectre de la rose. In 1994 he became a member of Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker's Rosas. Upon moving to Brussels, he became part of other local groups, such as Needcompany and les ballets C de la B. In 2000 Chartier and fellow choreographer Gabriela Carrizo founded the dance theater company Peeping Tom.

Photo Credit: Herman Sorgeloos