Lukas Dana - RING

An offbeat, poetic duet, RING explores the mechanisms of domination men can exert over one another. The performance borrows from boxing its rhythm and its codes, but also the unspoken undercurrents of a certain erotic tension.

Lukas Dana and Erwan Tarlet first engage in a physical clash whose tempo owes everything to a boxing match. They move through three-minute rounds, each one an offbeat, even grotesque, variation on the ambiguous violence that binds athletes together in the ring.

Their choreography soon takes a more dreamlike turn, leaving the audience unsure where to stand, both complicit in and voyeur of a performance that disturbs as much as it fascinates.

From the dancefloors of techno clubs to the rings of boxing clubs, writer and director Lukas Dana has observed and experienced first-hand the stereotypes surrounding male bodies when they touch and collide.

By revealing the homoerotic tension running through combat sports, the performance questions the ambivalence of a tightly regulated violence and what it means outside the ring.