RING

A comical and unsettling duo, RING explores the mechanisms of domination that men can exert over one another. The performance borrows its rhythm and conventions from boxing, but also the unspoken elements of a certain erotic tension.

Lukas Dana and Erwan Tarlet begin by engaging in a physical confrontation whose tempo is entirely dictated by the boxing match. They string together three-minute rounds, each a quirky, even grotesque variation on the ambiguous violence that binds the fighters in the ring. Their choreography soon takes a more dreamlike turn, whilst the audience is left unsure how to react, at once complicit and voyeuristic in a performance that is as unsettling as it is fascinating.

At a time when boxing is back in the spotlight, used in particular by the masculinist movement and politicians to symbolise their virile power, the writer and director Lukas Dana has, through years of practice, observed and experienced first-hand the stereotypes surrounding male bodies when they touch and collide. By revealing the homoerotic tension that permeates combat sports, the performance questions the ambivalence of highly regulated violence and its significance outside the ring.