Fit for queer masculinity?
In his new performance, Heavy Duty, choreographer and dancer Luca Bonamore explores the gym as a queer possibility space together with performance partner* Fran Klein.
Socially speaking, gyms as live meeting spaces for bodies in training are differently coded spaces, where diverse communities meet. To some degree, they are separated into luxury gyms and McFits for the masses, according to class and financial means. However, there are also various niche establishments such as special gyms for women or John Harris, which is frequented by many gay men. The gym is a place of contradictions and inclusion but also of exclusion and shame. Unfit and older bodies in decline had better go to Kieser Training…
The cult of fitness and body optimisation has been flooding TikTok and Instagram for some time now. On these platforms, self-proclaimed “menfluencers” invoke a masculine gym community that indulges in toxic masculinity, queerphobia and misogyny through excessive body culture. The fitness centre is a place where bodies are compared, celebrating toned bodies and masculinity in particular. But it is also a place of homoeroticism, of queer streams of desire and sometimes it is a cruising zone (a public place where people look for anonymous sex).
In his recent pieces, Luca Bonamore explored the subject of cruising in various contexts and locations. In this gym performance, however, it serves as a possibility space rather than referring to the modes of relationship that the performers run through during the course of the evening. With its choreographic sequences, acrobatic exercises and movement narratives, the dance performance Heavy Duty focuses on the thresholds of physical desire and the in-between spaces of queer culture in the fitness centre. What do proximity, distance, attraction, dominance, the flexing of muscles, power games and body culture in the gym signify? First and foremost, you train for and by yourself, to be healthy and fit, but in the public meeting space that is the fitness centre, there is also an element of posing, of displaying your own body and muscles and looking at those of others, it’s about the gaze, about comparing yourself with others.
A tube scaffold (a stage rig serving as a horizontal bar) extends from the ceiling to the floor on the right side of the stage. The left half of the stage is divided by a floor-to-ceiling curtain of transparent orange plastic strips, with a dancing pole in front of it. There is no fitness equipment to be found anywhere on stage.
Visibly in top shape, performer* Fran Klein (a self-designated “dyke”) enters the initially quiet space and, sitting down, starts doing hip-opening exercises and poses; repetitive, ritualistic movements to increasingly rhythmic echo beats (music live on stage by Zosia Hołubowska). Luca Bonamore appears in a tight wrestling jersey and starts a similar routine. The athletic fitness rituals begin to overlap, just as the eyes meet repeatedly while training and posing. It’s a game of watching and looking away, of dancing around each other and then being by oneself again. It’s also a checking out of bodies through playful sports activities and “bro” rituals. Accordingly, the chalk ball emitting white powder, as it is being tossed back and forth, becomes a tool for advances, distancing and desire.
Two extremely beautiful, fit queer bodies that do not embody toxic masculinity but alternative masculinities, play with fitness and eroticism. They do not pander to the self-loving muscle man but, at most, refer to him in subversive and humorous ways. The exchange of desires vibrates to minimalist techno sounds as the powers of attraction and muscle building are being trained. There is no need for words or clever commentary. What matters is an energetic dynamic of balance and movement flow, a play with codes and mutual trust, queer movements that are “hot” but at the same time challenge rituals of masculinity and power games. The dancing and performing bodies are rhythmic, muscular and musical; they are proud, sensitive and vulnerable. In addition to games of catch and “bro” games, the performers illustrate the eroticism of scaffolding tubes, the shift of dominance, active/passive situations verging on transgression and injury as well as the mutual exhaustion of the bodies together and individually.
The ending is melancholy. Very tenderly, Luca Bonamore quotes and sings the legendary song by the Riot Grrrl punk band Bikini Kill behind the curtain:
“That girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighborhood
She’s got the hottest trike in town
That girl, she holds her head up so high
I think I wanna be her best friend, yeah
Rebel girl, rebel girl…”
Perhaps “rebel girl” is a precarious ascription in the queer possibility space that also negotiates the (im)possible desires of “the dyke” and “the fag”.
After the piece, I asked myself: How can a gym be a safe space for queer and TIN (trans_inter_non-binary) people? Because only a handful of TIN people I know go to the gym. The piece did not provide an answer to the various forms of discrimination but showed queer spaces of attraction, desire and possibility.
Gin Müller is a queer ar/ctivist, living and working in Vienna. He has been involved in performance/theatre projects at brut Vienna for many years. In addition, he teaches at the University of Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.