Portuguese performer Guilherme Garrido casually sits atop the feet of the Belgian Pieter Ampe, who lays beneath him with his legs in the air. This human erection provided by Ampe looks far from comfortable as Garrido greets the entering audience with a casual informality, as if he has all the time in the world. He openly chats with the audience about his day and his travels as a prelude before the performance – which he terms ‘the contemporary dance’ – will begin.

There is a subtle social dominance at this early stage that brings an exciting energy to the room. The two performers present themselves as a couple; one has the charm and grace to interact with everyone while the other is the support without whom he couldn’t function. And so what follows attempts to deconstruct the relationship of two men through physical action.

Without the theatricality of lighting or sound, the pair give nothing but their bodies to each other and our gaze. Language is replaced with grunts and snarls as machismo becomes the centre of attention – or a blurred machismo that explores the sexuality and gender deconstruction of the two men at play. Ampe and Garrido veer between representations of children one-upping each other or pretending to be robots / Godzilla in one moment, to stripping, hurting and exploring their genitalia with equal humorous innocence in the next. An innocence corrupted, not by them but rather through the gaze of the audience, as both grab, twist and blow into each others foreskins to our glee and delight.

The physicality at play is fun and while elements of contact improvisation lead us to set pieces within the work, the skill on display is competent but not advanced. Perhaps in a work that sets about deconstructing image this is as important as anything else as it subverts the ‘contemporary dance’ at play.

More, however, could have been made of the use of bodily excretion and fluids as the scent of male exertion was lost past the first two rows of the main auditorium at the Arnolfini. Vicarious excitement played fleetingly over the audience as they recoiled at what was a limited use of spit and sweat, and again these moments said more about us than them, in what felt like an opportunity missed. Indeed there was something too clean about viewing the work in this space. It needed to be tighter and more isolated; we needed as an audience to connect with the charges, throws and impact of the bodies onto the hard floor, but sadly raked seating and end-on staging meant that much of the action was performed too far downstage, meaning that only the first two rows could view certain moments and the audience was left disconnected rather than in rapture at the immediacy of the work.

Presented as part of the In Between Time Festival, this was a fun production that might have said a lot more. I would like to see it shown again in a venue working for it rather than against it. While the show does raise questions for us through entertainment and much laughter, one couldn’t help but feel that it could have done so much more in its presentation and deconstruction of us, them, and our shared symbiosis.