How muscular can you become in two months? Quite a lot. Especially if you are trained by a world champion bodybuilder. For the three actors of Lijfbouwers, this meant: a daily, gruelling workout and a strict diet. In this physical, visual performance, the young men show and tell what this did for their body and mind. Through bodybuilding, they found new strength, but the question is whether all their insecurity has disappeared.

The assignment came from choreographer and director Jotka Bauwens. She has experienced first-hand what fitness can do for someone who does not feel comfortable in their own body. Even after her dance training, she continued to feel vulnerable. It was only when she started strength training that she managed to stand more firmly on stage. Lijfbouwers is about the safety of the fitness room, and the solidarity of the athletes who work up a sweat there, but also share their vulnerability with each other. Bodybuilding, an extreme form of fitness, proves what the human body is actually capable of. But there is also something absurd in the performance. The idea that being muscular is the pinnacle of masculinity is played with. When the actors pose on pedestals, they have the beauty of statues from ancient Greece. With a spray treatment, one of them becomes a bronze statue. Until the brown paint, mixed with his sweat, starts to drip from his body in streaks and he can no longer maintain his pose properly. ‘Be a man!’ he tells himself to order. But no matter how fanatically he tries to cheer himself up, he also sounds a bit desperate.