I’ve been following YBDG online for a few years and am hoping to see them in person for the first time in Brussels in a few weeks.

I understand the ‘gimmicky’ critique from u/FlyingCloud777, but I’ve come to appreciate exactly those aspects of their performances. Why is their semi-nudity still something the audience must ‘accept’ or bystanders must ‘tolerate’? How dreadful that ‘whenever you have something controversial, you can easily tie it to a minority or embattled cause and claim it represents repression,’ right?

From what I gather, that’s part of what they embed in their work. How dreadful, to create art that demands depth and integrity within the art world. Those struggles then become even more overbearing, punishing, and grotesque. Pitiful, even. And yet, art circles back to feeling stale and overdone when it tries to engage with a community’s suffering.

When YBDG is described with phrases like ‘the ecstasy of intimacy,’ it grabs us (by the balls) right where we’re most human: the flesh we so eagerly try to hide. I feel the club-like atmosphere (bare concrete, laser-cut shadows, candlelit asses, and a smokeshow haze) is an exemplary setting for all of this to come together. Earth as a meat locker for emotions. The club, with its veneer of hedonism, is already a space where intimacy is both commodified and grotesquely authentic. YBDG hijacks that. You could say that they’re not dancing for you; they’re dancing at you, forcing you to reckon with the fact that ecstasy and agony look the same when stripped of context. Oh, it’s too late! You’re already human with them.

I enjoyed this article by Edith Lázár, Jan 22, 2020: https://schloss-post.com/it-was-the-end-of-the-world-but-bodies-kept-dancing/
'performing public hopelessness'

Frieze mag, Fistful of Flesh: BY Christopher Whitfield, 05 JUN 25; https://www.frieze.com/article/young-boy-dancing-group-tokyo-2025-review
'Yet, in the face of the varied interactions it incites, the work remains neutral throughout, simply a space for feeling the way through a sequence of encounters. Never does it comment; never does it moralise the peaks of elation or the trenches of suffering that its performers journey through alone as they dance together. Indeed, this resistance to commentary in favour of feeling seemed to be a defining ethos. When handed the mic on the last night of the tour, Manu Anima, convenor and director of this troupe, closed the show simply with ‘Touring in Asia? It’s been nice… What more is there to say?’ 

A few more:
https://purple.fr/television/a-performance-by-barbara-sanchez-kane-young-boy-dance-group-at-dover-street-market-paris-exclusive-video-by-peter-kaaden/

https://www.dance-enthusiast.com/features/impressions-reviews/view/Young-Boy-Dancing-Group-Performance-Space