14 OCTOBER 19:30 - 20:45   Boris Hristov House of Culture

PEEPING TOM (BELGIUM)

She is the beginning, transformation and brittle axis around which the family turns. She is mother.

Belgian company Peeping Tom presents the most beautiful and the most difficult role in both life and on stage. One pictorial dance exhibition which shows the various conditions and stages in the life of the mother. From the body in a coffin, to a frightened little girl, to a 40-year-old woman locked in her own cage, the play goes beyond what we think we know about the mother. Beyond the obvious into her complex inner world, where fear, madness, and dreams rule.

This is a meeting with her complex inner world where fear, madness, and dreams rule.

Intended as a confession by choreographer Gabriela Carrizo for her mother’s death, the spectacle is actually influenced by all dancers involved. Their memories build up the show’s matrix and unlock disturbing thoughts about being a woman, a parent, a mother.

The audience is brought to a number of seemingly familiar spaces – maternity ward, funeral home, recording studio, museum. But nothing is what it seems. The body turns out to be a warehouse where consciousness and unconsciousness merge, collide, and determine who we are. Unexpected connections dart out of the blurred boundaries between mourning and celebration, order and chaos, to hold on and to let go.

MOTHER (2016) is the second volume of Peeping Tom’s family trilogy that opened with FATHER (2014) and will close with CHILDREN.

PEEPING TOM
For 17 years, Peeping Tom’s hallmark has been a hyper-real aesthetic anchored to a concrete set: a garden, a living room, a basement, a residential container facing snowy hill … It seems familiar, but in fact, the stage is an unstable universe questioning logic, time and space. At the heart of the groups’ productions stands human nature, with its states, pain, and joy, with its dark side, which is worth enlightening.

Peeping Tom’s Dance Theater starts with a transfer of experiences between artists, making it personal, dynamic and touching. Born with the expressive language of motion and stage expression, artists use cinema techniques and sound effects recorded in real time while the shows are running.

The Belgian company has won a number of international awards, including the Le Salon Best Dance Show in France (2005), the Mont Blanc Award for Young Directors at the Salzburg Festival (2007), the Patrons Circle Award at the International Festival Of the Arts in Melbourne and awards from other countries. Their show “32 rue Vandenbranden” won the prestigious British Olivier Award (2015) for the best dance performance and “Vader / Father” won the same category at an international competition in Barcelona.

Gabriela Carizzo and Franck Chartier have been artistic directors of Peeping Tom since they co-founded the company in 2000.

Gabriela Carrizo
Born in Cordoba, Argentina, Gabriela Carrizo was ten years old when she began to dance at a multidisciplinary school. It had, what at the time was, the only group of contemporary dance for children and teenagers – the future Córdoba’s University Ballet. It was where Gabriela danced for a couple of years and created her first choreographies.

She moved to Europe when she was nineteen, and over the years co-operated with Caroline Marcadé, Les Ballets C de la B and Needcompany. Her first solo piece, E tutto sará d’ombra e di caline, and Bartime, was followed by various collaborations, including the opera Wolf (2002), by Les Ballets C de la B. Gabriela Carrizo directed also The missing door (2013) for the Nederlands Dans Theater – NDT 1 in The Hague and The Land (2015) for the Ensemble of Residenztheater (Munich, DE).

Franck Chartier
He began to dance when he was eleven. At the age of fifteen, his mother sent him to study classical ballet at Rosella Hightower in Cannes. Upon graduating, Franck Chartier joined Maurice Béjart’s notorious Ballet du 20ème Siècle. Three years later the show “Le spectre de la rose” came for Opéra de Paris. In 1994, Chartier’s artistic inspiration brought him back to Brussels where he settled down.

He participated in productions of various contemporary dance companies, including Les Ballets C de la B, Nederlands Dans Theater, Needcompany and more. He created the choreography for the adaptation of Henri Rabaud’s opera “Marouf, savetier du Caire” by Jérôme Deschamps and Opéra-Comique in Paris (2013).

In October 2016 Franck Chartier was awarded the prestigious Dutch price: ‘Swan Most Impressive Dance Production 2016’ for The lost room.

Duration: 75 minutes
Production: Peeping Tom
Direction: Gabriela Carrizo
Directorial assistance and dramaturgy: Franck Chartier
Creation and performance: Eurudike De Beul, Maria Carolina Vieira, Marie Gyselbrecht, Brandon Lagaert, Hun-Mok Jung, Yi-Chun Liu, Simon Versnel, Charlotte Clamens
Artistic assistance: Diane Fourdrignier
Sound composition and arrangements: Raphaëlle Latini, Renaud Crols, Glenn Vervliet, Peeping Tom
Sound mixing: Yannick Willox, Peeping Tom
Light design: Giacomo Gorini, Amber Vandenhoeck
Costume design: Diane Fourdrignier, Kristof Van Hoorde (internship), Peeping Tom 
Set design: Amber Vandenhoeck, Peeping Tom 
Set construction: KVS-atelier, Peeping Tom
Video rehearsals: Sulok Swablamban (internship), Gaspard Rozenwajn  
Foley Coach: Elias Vervecken  

Co-production: Theater im Pfalzbau (Ludwigshafen), Taipei Performing Arts Center (Taipei), KVS – Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg (Brussel), GREC – Festival de Barcelona / Mercat de les Flors (Barcelona), HELLERAU – European Center for the Arts Dresden, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Maison de la Culture de Bourges, La Rose des Vents (Villeneuve-d’Ascq), Festival Aperto / Fondazione I Teatri (Reggio Emilia), La Bâtie Festival de Genève.

With the support of: Flemish authorities

Distribution: Frans Brood Productions

Photos: ©Herman Sorgeloos and ©Oleg Degtiarov

Moeder is supported by: Theater im Pfalzbau Ludwigshafen (DE) and Taipei Performing Arts Center (Taiwan), key partners in the Vader, Moeder, Kinderen trilogy.

Peeping Tom wishes to thank: Alexandre Obolensky, Jean-Philippe Altenloh, Romy Beni, Heidi Ehrhart, Ina Peeters, Elias Vervecken, François Heuse, Theater FroeFroe.