When two straight male friends get physical to show their feeling for each other, it could be as tender as first love or as insidious as a couple of cranky fogies. Life is a balance for Belgian dancer, Pieter Ampe, and Portugal’s Guilherme Garrido. In their newest collaboration, they explore through the use of their bodies the relationship between two men. A contemporary dance piece that tests and crosses their own personal boundaries, Still Standing You shows the complexities of man-on-man action while wearing clothes and when clothes are no longer in the way. Fab Magazine sits down with Pieter Ampe to discuss man love.

Fab: Are you bromantic off stage with Ghilherme?

Pieter Ampe: We’re like an old married couple (laughs) being very hard on each other sometimes and other times very generous. Two years ago, we did an improvised trip to Provincetown in Cape Cod, where Gui “lost” his wallet at a strip joint we stopped at. It was in a way a romantic trip, and the next day we went to a transvestite party for an AIDS benefit. It’s great to have these experiences with him. I even took a picture of him lying down on the beach with an American flag sticking out of his ass.

Can you stand each other after all these years working together?

The title is pretty accurate. It is a cynical reference to standing up, standing each other and still supporting you. Can we still stand each other after so many years? We have to because we work together.

You sometimes get very homoerotic . . .

Being gay or straight is not really an issue. It is very curious and unbound like young boys. Being 10-0yrs-old is always there somewhere in men. You can always make fun. It’s when you start getting afraid of homosexuality that you lose this humour and intimacy with each other. In Morocco, men can walk around hand in hand, but once you speak about homosexuality, they’ll be very upset. I don’t know how you can split one thing from the other. I don’t need to define my identity so hard, heterosexual or not.