Everyone involved is necessary to its successful completion, but by the same token anyone can also make it fail.

Man Strikes Back is a musical juggling performance. The masters of ceremony? Five wooden triangles, a juggler and a drummer. Stijn Grupping juggles by bouncing rubber balls from one object to another while musician Frederik Meulyzer picks up the rhythm with his drums. Together they compose musical harmonies and an intriguing web of lines created by the bouncing balls in motion. Everything depends on both the precision and strength of the juggler and the speed of reaction of the drummer. 

Until the wooden triangles begin to mix and take up new positions. The concert develops into a fascinating choreography involving objects, juggler and musician. But who is directing whom? And who needs whom? Or is this an equally matched dance? Each triangle comes to life, revealing its own personality. But the livelier the triangles become, the more challenging it is for the juggler to keep the balls up in the air. 

Tremendous speed and precision are required to throw the bouncing balls at exactly the right place and at the prescribed rhythm and as such to perform the composition correctly. Objects and performers increasingly resemble each other. They are all necessary to bring the performance to a successful completion, but at the same time, they can just as well make it fail. 

Man Strikes Back is a musical circus performance by people and robots, for people and robots of 6 years and older.

‘What starts out as a light display of bravura for young and old develops into an entertaining and moving multimedia time lapse of the struggle between humankind and technology. (…) Post uit Hessdalen’s performance “by humans and robots for humans and robots from age 6” is absolutely refreshing.’ Jacoba Waumans – UUR KULTUUR