Review: Peeping Tom's DIPTYCH: THE MISSING DOOR AND THE LOST ROOM at Ottawa's National Arts Centre

Multiple award-winning Belgian dance theatre company, Peeping Tom, brought a new style of dance to Ottawa this week, displaying their signature blend of dance, theatre, and acrobatics with their production of Diptych: The Missing Door and The Lost Room at the National Arts Centre. Caroline Ohrt, Executive Producer of NAC Dance, saw a Peeping Tom production several years ago, and that experience stayed with her. That is why, upon taking up the helm of NAC Dance two years ago, her first invitation to an international company was to Peeping Tom. The NAC’s presentation of Diptych: The Missing Door and The Lost Room marks the company’s first foray into Canada.

Attempting to describe the experience is difficult because it is unlike anything I have seen before, but I’ll do my best... Seeing Diptych: The Missing Door and The Lost Roomis like finding yourself enclosed in a dark chamber filled with impressions intended to stimulate the senses and blur the lines between dream and reality. Diptych successfully captures the essence of a surrealist, fantasy-horror film - with its macabre lighting (designed by Tom Visser) and disconcerting music (sound dramaturgy by Raphaëlle Latini), combined with carefully calculated action sequences and facial expressions (direction by Gabriella Carrizo and Franck Chartier), and punctuated by sweeping dance and acrobatic movements.

The Missing Door finds a group of people in a dimly lit hallway containing only a desk and armchair. Despite being surrounded by many doors, they cannot seem to escape. The lost room takes place in a cabin suite on a boat. Once again, the characters appear trapped in their fate, and the line between antagonist and victim is hazy.

The set design (by Gabriella Carrizo and Justine Bougerol) is meticulously detailed and, during the pause between The Missing Door and The Lost Room, the former’s set is dismantled (and the latter’s assembled) with the help of the artists in front of the audience, linking the two segments. Moveable stage lights and actors seated in director-style chairs at stage left evokes the feeling that you are a voyeur who has sneaked onto a film set.

To say that the dance elements are anything less than extraordinary would be an understatement. Impossible lifts, turns, and flips defy logic throughout both pieces.

The dancers’ movements are sometimes paired with Foley effects to heighten suspense or drive the story’s progress forward. Both parts have a recurring theme of the forces of nature overtaking the characters, such as with rain, wind, snow and lightning. The horror is, at times, coupled with a sense of the absurd, which makes for a very unique piece of theatre. Peeping Tom's Artistic Directors, Gabriela Carrizo and Franck Chartier, have created an utterly enthralling and suspenseful spectacle; there is not a dull moment in Diptych’s seventy-minute run time.

The company met with thunderous applause at the curtain call and encore, proving that Ottawa audiences have an appetite for avant-garde performances such as Diptych, and I hope that NAC Dance will continue to invite groundbreaking artists to this city. Like Ohrt, I expect this experience to stay with me for years to come.

NAC Dance has truly put together an extraordinary season this year. Click here to see what else is on the agenda, like MOMIX’s Alice to be presented next month.

Diptych: The Missing Door and The Lost Room dancers include Lucía Burguete Sierra, Konan Dayot, Fons Dhossche, Lauren Langlois, Panos Malactos, Alejandro Moya, Eliana Stragapede, and Wan-Lun Yu.