“Chroniques” by Peeping Tom at Østre Gasværk Teater Copenhagen

Rocks and rolling, in a most literal sense, is probably the closest it gets to describing the visual idiom of Peeping Tom’s 2025 offering Chroniques. The Belgian dance company, established by Gabriela Carizzo and Franck Chartier describes its approach as taking inspiration from ‘hyperrealist settings’. So for example, their first trilogy, made between 2002-2007 started with more domestic locations – a garden, a living room, a basement. Later they moved their attention to snow-covered trailer parks (32 rue Vandenbranden 2009), retirement homes (Vader 2014) and ocean liners (Triptych 2013-2017).

In Gabriela Carizzo’s dreamlike (and nightmarish) Chroniques, the inspiration is an unnamed ‘sulphuric landscape’ – a kind of dynamic terrain described by geologists as subject to ‘intense geothermic and volcanic activity’. This seemingly post-anthropocentric choice serves as a gray and muddy background for a long view exploration of human efforts to attain immortality that are continuously thwarted by the species’ earthly physical limitations.

We may have invented the cartwheel, great tools of science, and the gramophone, we may have attained considerable self-knowledge and technical progress, even got to the Moon and back, but the sad truth is that we have never fully come out of the Dark Ages. That is: we are yet to overcome or successfully remediate our impulse for violence and destruction. This is the kind of story related by Chroniques in the form of a seamless 90 minute sequence, underscored by Raphaëlle Latini’s mysterious and enthralling score. As is a custom with Peeping Tom, the company that has been deservedly wowing international audiences in the last few years, their dance language is inventive, often surprising, apparently alien to the human body, and at times quite humorous.

The piece is performed by five male dancers (and five helpers) on a foggy and increasingly messy chiaroscuro set designed by Amber Vandenhoeck and lit by Bram Geldhof. The show’s atmosphere seems particularly fitting at Copenhagen’s Østre Gasværk Teater, a circular 19^th century gasworks factory made from exposed brick and concrete, that was selected for this occasion by Thomas Miet and Ulrik Birkkjaer as part of their steadily growing Copenhagen Dance programme, initiated only six years ago to close a perceived gap in local provision. Judging by the impressive turn out at the venue on a sunny Saturday afternoon and a standing ovation at the end, they are doing a great job.

Chroniques by Peeping Tom ©️Camille Leprince