In this double bill by Raymond Liew Jin Pin, the production Orchidee stands like an overture before his subsequent, also new piece Lotus Fight Club. The starting point is an examination of traditional Southeast Asian dances and autobiographical material to explore the movements of the queer diaspora: Together with the dancers from the Folkwang Tanzstudio, he explores the question of how to enter into relationships and build intimacy. The result is a fleeting fabric of bodies and memories - a dance between transience and permanence.
Welcome to the Lotus Fight Club: when night falls, the ribbons of the traditional Chinese ribbon dance turn into whips - an allusion to the sodomy law from the colonial era in Malaysia, which is still enforced by whipping. The choreography is driven by an energy that the dancers cannot escape. They must follow the rhythm of the ribbons - or submit to it. Desire and submission, fantasies of pleasure and punishment are staged here side by side as if in an arena as a place of competition. At dawn, the club is transformed into a training ground for rebellious dances and a ritual of resistance begins.