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“32 rue Vandenbranden” is like a Jacque Tati Film in Dance Language.
Superb, delightful, and disturbing describes 32 rue Vandenbranden by Brussels based Peeping Tom Dance Company, conceived in 2009 and directed by Gabriela Carrizo & Franck Charter. The company is especially well known for creating dance around hyperrealistic settings. This broad hyperbolic trip (at BAM Harvey theater)in the netherworld of altered reality takes place in the snow-covered tundra of “a place” with three trailer homes that are used to draw the action in and out of the theatrical experience. Subconscious dreams play out in bizarre motifs that twist reality without judgment and minimal if any self-consciousness like a Jacques Tati film.
If there is self-consciousness it takes place when and if it is required. Certainly not when two men suckle on fabulous mezzo-soprano singer Eurudike De Beul’s breasts like deprived infants. When slick, brooding dancer Hun Mok Jung publicly masturbates, a group of fur-covered travelers comes through the neighborhood; they wave at him, he briefly stops to notice them during his passionate self-absorbed adoration before beginning again.
In a torrent of surprises, many things happen. The images stay with you. A cast of five outstanding dancers blows the audience off their assumptive behinds, including, the beautifully elastic Maria Carolina Vieira who manages…