Peeping Tom, Triptych

​ I don’t go to see much in the way of contemporary dance, but on a whim, I decided to get tickets to the Power Center to see Triptych, a performance developed by the Peeping Tom dance company from Belgium. Comprised of three pieces—The Missing Door, The Lost Room and The Hidden Floor—created in 2013, 2015, and 2017, respectively, the performance ran just over two hours, including a partial intermission. This post is a bit of a break from what I’ve been writing lately, but it feels worth highlighting, if only to help keep at least some attention on artistic endeavours. Just as a warning, I have not refrained from spoiling anything in here, so you might want to stop reading if you’re planning to see it and want the full effect.¹

Overall, this work is perhaps the closest thing I’ve seen to Artaud’s vision of the theater of cruelty. Although Peeping Tom never takes it to a particular extreme degree, it definitely felt like they were aiming for at least a partial assault on the senses, including a crying baby, gruesome themes, full and partial nudity, loud grating sounds, and sheer volume, not to mention the general tension and appearance of danger to the performers. Near the end, when there was a visual suggestion of part of the set burning, I could swear that I suddenly felt more heat coming from that side of the theater than the other.

In terms of imagery, the work draws heavily on surrealism, as well as filmic horror. (At times it was more Lynch, and other times more Croenenberg). The staging also used techniques akin to stage magic quite effectively, including prop cloths on wires, doors that seemingly moved on their own, and impressive use of blackouts and distractions to give the illusion of performers suddenly appearing on and disappearing from stage. Limbs also at times appeared where they shouldn’t be. Performers seemed to melt into chairs, or emerge from them. At one point, one appeared in a doorway carrying another’s head. Far from trying to hide the technique, however, there was a clearly very intentional element of reminding the audience that what they were watching was a performance. Most “tricks” in terms of the set were revealed in time (sometimes needlessly so).

The most complete example of this was at the break between the first and second pieces. There was a brief fade to black, at which point a few audience members began applauding; but as the lights came on, accompanied by a spotlight, a performer caught in the intensity of its beam gave a look of scorn back out at the audience. Some performers began repositioning props, while others lay lifeless on stage. Soon the walls of the set were being dismantled, with others put up in its place, with cast and crew and the backstage area (or at least a false backstage) visible in the dim work lights. (This was repeated again between the second and third pieces, with the house lights up this time, to cue that it was also intermission.)

Although the staging was extremely impressive, ultimately the thing that made it work was the incredible physical talent of the performers. Separate coordinated motions cued a sense of thrownness, with performers seemingly being tossed about by invisible forces. Brutal repetitive actions gave the impression of one performer mechanically vibrating across the stage, as if on a vibration table. Especially in the early scenes, an incredible level of acrobatic fitness was shown, through tumbling, spinning, and falls. One performer might contort another’s body into a disturbing arrangement, again leaning into creating discomfort for the audience. Another might be carried as if they were a wooden mannequin or frozen body. When the carefully managed tossing and twirling of bodies eventually gives way to the appearance of one being dropped (in what was no doubt a carefully choreographed maneuver), the effect is all the stronger.

I almost wish that had not been spoiled for me by having overheard another member of the audience, but in the third act, they flooded the stage, something which I don’t think I’ve seen done live before, and which obviously heightens the sense of risk and danger. This was compounded by having the dancers climb atop a seemingly unstable pile of furniture, and the more explicit use of imagery of disorder, starvation, death, and decay. Similarly effective was earlier impressions of dancers being caught in a whirlwind, and essentially being sucked out of a doorway, again drawing heavily on filmic imagery and showing remarkable bodily control and mastery.

The only part that didn’t work for me were the few bits that involved spoken English dialogue, which in each case leaned far too much into melodramatic monologue, at least for my tastes. They certainly weren’t out of place, thematically, and perhaps even helped provide a more explicit topical grounding, but the difference from the otherwise more abstract work was too jarring, and had the effect of pulling me out of the illusion. (But then, I’m also just allergic to melodrama).

Beyond the impressions I’ve described, I wasn’t able to intuit a whole lot in terms of message, but that may not be the point. I heard another audience member mention how it was three pieces set on a cruise ship, which I guess makes sense, but I’m not totally sure I would have gotten there on my own. For me the power was in the way it reduced bodies to machines, somehow brought Dali-like imagery to life, and created startling living tableaus that echoed Raft of the Medusa.

At the same time, the work was a decent reminder of some of the tensions in performance more generally: the creation of a sense of danger through careful control; the onerous duplication of effects that would be trivial to do with film, and the laying bare of the machinery of production, to the extent that the machinery itself becomes part of the performance. Ironically, the announcement at the beginning that no flash photography or recording was permitted worked very effectively as a reminder that this particular performance would not be preserved, at least not exactly. I imagine there will be extensive collections of photographic and other documentation of this set, the choreography, these performances, and so forth, but looking at those will only ever be a partial window onto exactly what went on within the frame.