Arguably the world’s greatest boxer, Muhammad Ali, once said: “The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses – behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.”

It is that idea of dancing under the lights which forms the basis of Compagnie Kafig’s Boxe Boxe – the brainchild of French choreographer and former martial artist Mourad Merzouki.

“Boxing’s a form of dance,” he says.

“I realised that as a teenager when I got into hip-hop after years of doing martial arts.

“While one is identified with brutality and violence and the other with grace and pleasure, I found a touch of all these ingredients in each of them.”

Boxe Boxe sees a company of eight dancers combine the art of boxing with street dance moves, all soundtracked to a live score by a string quartet, drawing on both original music and selections from Philip Glass, Schubert, Ravel and Glenn Miller.

In Merzouki’s eyes, the similarities between boxing and dance stretch from the ring and the stage to the referee and the eagle-eyed critics.

“Like martial arts, dance demands hard work, sweat, no effort spared,” he says. “In both, the performer commits himself and suffers the same encounter with the void in the form of his opponent or the audience. No weaknesses or flaws allowed – he has to satisfy the public.”

As his career continues, he believes this one-on-one battle with the audience intensifies.

“You really have to show your mettle,” he says. “When fame and recognition are no longer enough, only risk-taking – the face-off, the leap into the unknown and ultimately your battle with yourself – will keep you going.

“There’s a mix – the excitement of combat and fear of the spectators, the gut fear of getting badly knocked about, of taking a kicking, together with that great feeling of abandoning yourself, of achieving absolute fulfilment in that magic moment on stage or in the ring.

“The move from boxing to dance is like a pirouette – like when Chaplin turns a street brawl into an hilarious choreographed sequence.”

Many of Merzouki’s team of dancers originate from the world of street and break dancing.

They took part in four months of rehearsal for Boxe Boxe, including a month with a boxing coach to ensure the right look on stage when they boxed.

“First we learned how to position ourselves,” says David Rodriguez, a veteran of nine years with Compagnie Kafig. “We learned how to stand with our body while boxing and how to use our arms.

“I have a character in the show that I was able to choose. My character is inspired by the Charlie Chaplin universe. It’s a little crazy but hopefully very amusing.

“Before Boxe Boxe I’d never boxed and I had to discover what boxing is,” adds dancer Remi Autechaud, who has been with Compagnie Kafig since 2005.

“The technique has some similarities with hip-hop dancing.

“I was inspired by hip-hop dance specifically because hip-hop has no limits. Whether you’re tall or not, whether you’re big or thin, you can always manage to dance to hip-hop, it’s the way you are that will bring your speciality to hip-hop.”

Indeed, one of Autechaud’s favourite hip-hop moves finds its way into Boxe Boxe.

“My favourite move is called Smurf,” he says.

“In the USA when the dance was being born, the dancers danced with white gloves, like a Smurf.

[In Boxe Boxe] there is a part where there are three dancers dancing Smurf.”

Fellow dancer Teddy Verardo has seen both similarities and differences between boxing and hip-hop dance.

“You’ve got this diversity of movements ranging from being light on your feet one moment and the next moment you’re attacking,” he says.

“As Mourad used to be a boxer himself he taught us a lot of things as well as specifically looking at our attitude and the way we behave with the body.

“You need a specific type of flexibility, it’s not the same flexibility that you need for dancing because you’ve got specific types of movement.

“When you’re dancing you’re trained to be light. Boxing is different – you have to put weight on your legs. It was a real challenge and I did learn a lot. Beyond dancing we had to learn how to play with this art that is boxing.”