Extreme Combat: The Dancer and the Fighter | movie | 2020 | Official Trailer - video Dailymotion

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Plunged into a realm of ultra-masculinity, Akram faced his fascination with aversion and physicality of violence by spen | dG1faVQxSnBhbjZ6eU0

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00:00Mixed martial arts, one of the fastest-growing sports on the planet.

00:07I'm here to understand the hold this violent spectacle has on us.

00:16I'm Akram Khan. I'm a dancer and choreographer.

00:20Oh, that's uncomfortable.

00:22I've spent eight weeks training...

00:24Are you allowed to do that?

00:26..with three of the top MMA fighters in Britain...

00:29Don't worry if you shit yourself with this machine, it doesn't matter.

00:33..as they prepare for career-defining fights.

00:40I want to know what makes these ultra-macho men tick.

00:45Is the violence that's on display here something that's in all of us?

00:49On it! On it!

00:51What happens when our two very different worlds,

00:54contemporary dance...

00:58..and MMA, collide?

01:02Yes! Yes!

01:06Mike studied philosophy and Japanese at university

01:09before dropping out to become a fighter.

01:15You build a vocabulary of techniques,

01:18and once you have those various techniques,

01:20you can form different sentences.

01:22Anything you're doing, if you can really get into it

01:24and lose yourself into it, then it's kind of freeing.

01:27It just takes a load of weight off your shoulders.

01:29You see a lot of things, if you're going to go for, like, dance,

01:32you have, like, whirling dervishes.

01:35Like, they do a thing and then they do it and then they do it,

01:39and they completely lose themselves in what they're doing.

01:41And all you are is, you are that moment.

01:44And you get that little taste of, I guess,

01:46what everybody's been looking for, for ever.

01:49Hammer, hammer, elbow, uppercut, overhand.

01:52I just see brute force, violence.

01:54I'm not trying to tell you that there's no aggression to it

01:57and there's no violence involved.

01:59Of course there is, but it sounds a bit tacky,

02:02but for me, there is a spiritual quality to it.

02:04So you think we all have kill instinct?

02:06100%, but we've...

02:08The modern society is very civilised,

02:12and it's not much use to us in this modern day and age

02:16to be able to exercise that ability.

02:19Today, there's no survival advantage

02:21for you being able to move the way you do,

02:23but there's something deeply fulfilling

02:25in exercising and moving your body in that way.

02:28And violence kind of gets said as a dirty word,

02:31but I think it is an important part of who we are and our make-up,

02:35and there is a healthy outlet for it.

02:38A lot of bad comes from when we try to repress

02:41what could be a natural, healthy impulse.

02:44Carl Jung talks about your shadow side.

02:48When you ignore it and repress it,

02:50then it becomes something, then it becomes a problem,

02:53then it becomes dark.

02:55So to be a fully realised person,

02:57he argued you have to incorporate your shadow side.

03:01If you don't deal with it, particularly in young men, I think,

03:04then they're going to find a bad outlet for it.

03:07Now you're going to try and let out on me.

03:10I'm just curious to know if I will really try to hit him or not.

03:15Well, you'd better have, because...

03:18You might get hit otherwise.

03:21That's the rules. That's the rules.

03:24How about it?

03:26No, that's not a punch.

03:28You're punching. Punching.

03:31Punching.

03:36Try and land one of those punches on the face now.

03:39Keep going. Ten seconds to one.

03:42That's it. There we go.

03:44Time. There we go.

03:46When Paul was saying, punch him hard, punch him hard, don't pretend,

03:49I started to realise that I was thinking of technique,

03:52and as long as I thought of...

03:54If I thought of violence and I thought that was a person,

03:57that's when I couldn't do it.

03:59When I was like, oh, no, he's teaching me something, a system,

04:02a technique to be effective,

04:04then the violence became numb when I finished.

04:07I realised that that's the very thing I don't like.

Extreme Combat: The Dancer and the Fighter | movie | 2020 | Official Trailer

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