Men in ballet tights have long been a source of scorn, a fair cop when you see old photos of them with wrinkly knees and alarming underwear. Then they were little more than sack trucks, portering ballerinas from fairytale pillar to fantasy post.

Things have come a long way since then. Men’s strength and agility are thrillingly used in ballet, although it’s in contemporary dance where a recent series of male duets have tranformed how men move and what they convey.

First came Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion, who explored ideas of male friendship while barely moving at all, followed by Ballet Boyz Michael Nunn and William Trevitt, who probed combat and camaraderie.

Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui used kathak and hip-hop in their famed duet, and now Frédéric Arsenault and Alexander Fray use circus moves to show men’s aggression and affection.

The result is robust stuff. In one scene the slender Arsenault takes a running leap and is “caught” on his hips by the feet of the stockier Fray who is lying on his back with his feet aloft. The force and velocity of the lunge, and the precision of the catch, produce a collective gasp in the audience, who stay open-mouthed for most of the daring show.

There is as much of the boxing ring as the circus ring to Arsenault and Fray. The French-Canadian duo tumble and struggle, pulling at each other’s clothes like ferocious small boys. They hoik each other around, flip, summersault and spin, and interlace their fights with ingenious cantilevering and vigorous balances. There are no props. All they have is each other, which they substitute for trapeze, trampolene, climbing wall and pommel horse. They do not disguise the effort nor the emotional aspect of aggression which, they seem to suggest, is not only allied to intimacy but almost the same thing.