productions

7/8/2014
MACHO DANCER - Work Space Brussels
productions
MACHO DANCER
EISA JOCSON
Last updated : 18/11/2012
Outline
Macho Dancing is performed by young men in night clubs for male as well as female clients. Macho Dancing with its specific
movement vocabulary and physicality seems to be a Philippine phenomenon. It is an economically motivated language of
seduction, using notions of masculinity as body capital.
My project is a solo piece of a woman performing a macho dance. Her becoming a macho dancer challenges our perception
of sexuality and questions gender as a tool for social mobility:
The macho dancer through his practice is pushed into a marginal, weak position in society. However the image that a macho
dancer simulates is that of a strong male. The woman performing a macho dance assimilates that role of a strong male, and
with transgressing gender, the performer also seems to change her social status. Nevertheless, since she engages in that
marginal practice that is macho dance she remains vulnerable, weak, just like the social status of an objectified woman. The
performance thus generates a “gender loop” in which performer and audience are entangled.
“He realizes his potential, and exercises his individual empowerment, only to return the following night. Desire and
performance of social mobility, after all, are only posed in simulation. In gay bars, as in the Philippine nation, real mobility is
evasive, restricted, and temporary. Yet every night, the desire and the performance of social mobility are reenacted.”
Rolando B. Tolentino , Macho Dancing, the Feminization of Labor, and Neoliberalism in the Philippines
Credits
Concept, Choreography and Performance: Eisa Jocson
Music: TBD
Coach: Rasa Alksnyte
Dramaturg: Arco Renz
Coproduction: workspacebrussels
Residency and support: Wpzimmer, Beurrschouwburg
Dates
DATE
DATE
13/12/2012 ­ 15/12/2012 / Beursschouwburg
19/11/2012 ­ 12/12/2012 / Rosas
Other productions
No other productions found
Info
A copy of a copy …
a conversation with Eisa Jocson about machismo, gender, sexuality and power relations;
collected during the preparation phase of "Macho Dancer".
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In Macho Dancer, Eisa Jocson performs a macho dance. Macho Dancing is a Philippines phenomenon, performed
by young men in macho clubs for mostly female clients. The performance Macho Dancer investigates and
expands this phenomenon beyond the local context of the Philippines.
Eisa Jocson becoming a macho dancer challenges our perception of sexuality and questions gender as a tool for
seduction, power and social mobility.
How did you encounter Macho Dancing?
The first idea came in spring 2011 when I was in residence at Nadine in Brussels, rehearsing Death of the Pole
Dancer and working on a pole dance collaboration with Daniel Kok. We were researching movement languages of
seduction and at some point I brought up macho dancing. My first visit to a macho club in Manila was in 2010. I
had thought that macho dancing was a universal practice, but during the research with Daniel I realized that in other
places male erotic performance was very different from Manila. In the US and in general, I would describe it mostly
as group phantasy performances with ties to hip-hop and other entertainment forms. The language of macho dancing
in the Philippines is very different, an extremely slow and sensual state of being, pulling you into a voluntarily
objectified male body. And macho dancers have a more personal and potentially intimate relationship with the
female or gay client.
What is the relation of your previous work Death of the Pole Dancer to Macho Dancer?
Macho Dancer takes off directly from where Death of the Pole Dancer ends - the pole dancer reincarnates as a macho
dancer. The destruction of one persona gives birth to another.
Why is macho dancing a phenomenon unique to the Philippines, what is it's history?
This is a very complex question. As a temporary answer, I would bring forward three conditions that I think
facilitated the invention and evolution of macho dance in the Philippines.
The first is poverty and lack of education. Most macho dancers come from the provinces to Manila in order to make
money. Due to a lack of education there are few opportunities for these boys from the provinces. There are two kinds
of opportunities for them in macho clubs: first, getting sponsored by a client male or female; and, second, the
opportunity of being discovered as a talent in the entertainment industry.
A second point is liberalism and the feminization of labor in the Philippines: due to a difficult economy, a growing
number of men is forced to seek for work in the service or care-taking industries, thus using their body as capital.
Macho dancing could be seen as an extreme form of this tendency, made possible, among other factors, by Imelda
Marcos' empowerment of the gay economy in Manila in the 70s and 80s.
A third point is the importance of "gender stereotypes" in the Philippines, which are strongly propagated by
popular media. Heavily influenced by these stereotypical gender modes, men and women in the Philippines rather
aspire to conform than to affirm a more personal gender image. In macho clubs, macho dancers cultivate and perform
a specific notion of heterosexual masculinity represented by the lower class, that is the savage and the sexually
dominant.
First generation macho dancers in the 70’s and mid 80’s moved snake-like and with more feminine fluidity. Due to
political and economic shifts macho dancing took on a more marketable form. The second generation of macho
dancing involves slower paced bodily movement infused with masculine personality, represented by the performers
costume (construction worker, cowboy etc.) and ‘dominant’ sex moves. The consistent macho vocabulary in macho
clubs is proliferated through inter-macho dancing competitions and performances between macho clubs.
How would you define being a Macho?
Macho as portrayed in Filipino macho clubs is associated to bodily secretions such as sweat, blood and semen:
manifestations of physical exertion. It shows the man rough and raw, full of virility and physically dominant. The
macho dancer is playing out an interesting contrast: as a performer he projects an image of a languid savage
masculine sexuality, rough and domineering. But as a guest relations officer he becomes servile and affective,
displaying more feminine traits.
In a larger context, machismo is a state of excessive masculinity. It assumes that masculinity is superior to
femininity. It is characterized by a domineering attitude, fierceness and bravado; it shows a heightened sense of
virility that is expressed flashily and exaggerates toughness.
Would that mean that social life is an ongoing gender war over power and dominance?
I don’t think that this drive for dominance is necessarily directed against women. I think it is more a general mode of
behavior in response to social expectations and hierarchies. And even women can take on a hyper-masculine
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‘macho’ approach in order to pursue their social goals and to elevate their life conditions.
I think my project takes off from this point: me being a woman taking on the macho dance vocabulary is a hypermasculine approach. But it is twisted in the sense that the macho dancer in the nightclub is in a marginalized
position. The performance generates a gender loop.
The project mirrors my own social position. And therefore, I am actually using the macho dancer and this
performance as my proper tool of social mobility, because with this residency it gives me access to the “First
World”, to Europe and its artistic networks.
... and what made you personally become interested in macho dancing?
What fascinated me in the first place was the movement itself, the intense physicality, and the mix of corruption,
Dionysian ecstasy and sexual power. Although it is a complex cocktail of conditions, techniques and ambiguous
intentions, this language carries the potential of a sort of liberation, of a loss of Self for me as a performer, in order to
rebuild myself physically as a macho dancer.
And in a second step I became interested in the historic evolution, its socio-cultural conditions and personal stories.
When you mention Dionysian ecstasy, I wonder how the catholic church, very powerful in the Philippines, actually reacts
on the phenomenon of macho dancing?
Macho dancing is a marginal practice and not officially accepted by the church nor by society at large. However it
is not repressed or forbidden either. It seems that for some reason the church tolerates the existence of macho
dancing; just as it does with conventional strip clubs, massage parlors or girlie bars.
How did you design the rehearsal process for Macho Dancer?
At this point I am in the research and preparation phase of the project. My residency in Brussels will only start in a
couple of weeks. My research started with going to Macho clubs. In the clubs I was selecting three macho dancers
that I invited to teach me their techniques and signature moves. I copied and repeated the movements that they
showed me over and over again, until I had the feeling that I resemble to what they are doing. By mirroring a macho
dancers’ simulation of social machismo characteristics, I become a copy of a copy. Twice removed from its original
context and appropriated to suit different intentions.
Another part of the research is to break down the vocabulary, to codify a language, so that it is possible to
restructure this language in a different way. During the residency at Workspace Brussels, I will then experiment with
these fragments of language and explore how to restructure them. Through this vocabulary of movement, I
investigate the concept of Machismo. I am working with contradictions, since Machismo is born out of an
individual’s perceived weakness or lack of stability; in that sense Machismo is actually an over-compensation.
Another part of the preparation is to shape my physical image as a macho by going to the gym and building up
muscles. The gym is also an interesting research ground for machismo; it is a space where men enlarge their selfimage of masculinity by building up muscles. It is interesting to take note that women, as opposed to men, go to the
gym in order to lose body mass.
In your creation process: when you, as a woman, are macho-dancing, in what way does it affect or transform you?
Macho dancing makes me feel different, think different. Like pole dancing, it is a language of seduction, but in a
very different way, because gender roles are reversed.
Based on my observations in the club and studying with Macho dancers, when I am macho dancing myself, I have
to dominate the audience in a very specific way. I have to approach everybody from above, be higher, imposing. I
have to create a distance that places me, the macho dancer, higher than the others, as if looking through the
audience.
I have to make sure that an objectification takes place for the audience, in order for the spectator to be able to
project personal phantasies freely, without being "disturbed", or inhibited by the fact that I, the macho dancer, am
actually a human being. This is a very specific state, difficult to describe, and clearly different from the
objectification that I am familiar with as a pole dancer.
The physicality of pole dancing is vertically oriented and is dealing with the illusion of elevation. The physicality
of macho dancing is the exact opposite. It is horizontally oriented and very rooted.
As mentioned above, part of my training routine for Macho Dancer is going to the gym: in the
Philippines muscular women are considered less desirable. Being more muscular transforms the way I move, and the
way people look at me as well as my image of myself. At the same time building muscles gives me a masculine sense
of physical volume. Coming from ballet and pole dancing, that is a very different and new sensation of movement
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for me, a new sensation of muscular power and of relating to space as well.
Would you say that you are operating a sort of gender reversal passing from your practice of pole dancing to macho
dancing?
Macho dancing does not mean that I become a man. I am taking a hyper-masculine vocabulary of movement in
order to challenge gender stereotypes.
And the decision to shape these experiences into a performance?
With the performance I wish to share and give physical shape to my questions about the phenomenon “macho
dance” and all that it brings along. Beyond the context of the Philippines I want to challenge our conceptions of
gender, sexuality and seduction. After all, macho dancing shows that gender is not fixed; gender is a social
construct, affirmed through repetitive performance.
Macho dancing, as feminized labor and as reversed sexual objectification, is like a mirror that not only reflects a
social condition specific to the Philippines, but also points at patterns and stereotypes of gender and sexuality that
are in place on a much larger scale.
For example, macho bar structures actually imitate patriarchal patterns, thus reinforcing, imitating, and multiplying
those patterns. Because the roles are simply reversed, female clients become the consumers and the machos become
the object of consumption. Macho clubs and their activities are not a space of resistance, but a marketplace to
consume male objectification.
Yet another question is how to challenge, to transform or to eventually destroy my image as a woman, as well as my
image as an objectified pole dancer. To show that gender can be seen differently, or even can be objectified
differently.
What is your take on seduction, independently from gender?
Seduction is everywhere. My practice is more than that, more than sexuality and sensuality. I use it as a discourse
about the mechanics of seduction in a larger context.
In Macho Dancer the movement vocabulary is born out of the goal to seduce in a masculine sexual manner. When I
am macho dancing it is not really sure where the seduction is directed to, to men or to women. The macho language
performed by a woman does not have a clear orientation.
Seduction creates desire, and I am interested in desire. Desire is the root of everything. Desire makes us move,
without desire there is no progress. In the macho dance context, the desire for social mobility takes the male
objectified, performing body as capital. Ultimately, it is the desire to elevate one’s life condition through one’s own
means.
In order to achieve this goal, the macho dancer creates desire within the "other". Where does this desire come from?
How does our socio-cultural context dictate how who and what we desire? How do we construct ourselves in
relation to our desires?
What is coming after the Macho dance project?
After Macho Dancer, there is the Japayuki Project. It is a research project on Japayukis: Filipina entertainers
working in Japan as hostesses in night bars. It investigates the Japayuki body mediating between Philippine
identity and Japanese cultural context.
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Room 100 and Eisa Jocson at Queer New York Arts Festival - NYTimes.com
November 1, 2013
Transforming Movements
By GIA KOURLAS
What does “queer performance” mean? In the second edition of the Queer New York
International Arts Festival, the notion of queer relates not only to gender and identity, but
also falls under the bigger umbrella of otherness. Programmed by André von Ah (who died in
September) and Zvonimir Dobrovic, the event offers a look at artists working in anomalous,
eccentric and even otherworldly forms.
On Wednesday at the Abrons Arts Center at Henry Street Settlement, the festival continued
with performances by Room 100, a Croatian company formed by Jakov Labrovic and Antonia
Kuzmanic, and Eisa Jocson, a choreographer and dancer from the Philippines. The first, Room
100’s “C8H11NO2,” was created as a duet, but visa problems prevented Mr. Labrovic from
traveling, and the piece was reworked as a solo.
Named after the formula for dopamine, “C8H11NO2” begins with an interview on film with a
man who describes multiple stays at psychiatric hospitals. As he talks about being thrown in
isolation, how many days he was tied up (42) and the side effects of his medication, his hands
tremble uncontrollably.
Moments later, Mr. Labrovic appears on video, too. With his back to us, he slowly contorts his
shoulders, rounding his scapula forward and backward so it appears that faces — of monsters,
of animals — are fighting their way through his glistening skin. The film is also reflected in a
pool of water that sits on the stage, mirroring and multiplying the ominous images.
Ms. Kuzmanic, in the flesh, stretches on her side next to the pool, hiding her face to look
disembodied. Every stretch of a leg or an arm is duplicated in the water so that she, like Mr.
Labrovic, transforms into multiple creatures. Is this a corporeal rendering of schizophrenia,
what is real, and what is not?
In “Macho Dancer,” Ms. Jocson explores pole dancing by raising her own questions about the
role of gender in a dance style performed by young men in nightclubs in the Philippines. This
brand of dance exists on the fine line between power and weakness. Along with the image of a
strong male body, objectification is at play.
But Ms. Jocson adds another layer as she is transformed into a macho dancer herself: Her
strong body teases the crowd with leather shorts and steel-toe boots that stomp heavily on the
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raised platform stage.
As a woman portraying a seductive male dancer, she is hauntingly accurate. Ms. Jocson’s
androgynous beauty, paired with the control she uses to undulate her torso or to spin forward
on a knee, is stunning; even while grinding on the floor, she never forsakes her taut, calculated
tension.
All the same, the repetition of her slipping in and out of fog while stark lights envelope her in
a hazy silhouette wears you down. As the lights finally dim, and George Michael’s “Careless
Whisper” fills the space with the lyrics “I’m never going to dance again/guilty feet have got no
rhythm,” it seems tragic for all the wrong reasons. She dances with her shadow.
The Queer New York International Arts Festival runs through Sunday at various locations;;
queerny.org.
MORE IN DANC
The Week
Exodus T
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ArtAsiaPacific: Macho Macho Woman Interview With Eisa Jocson
ArtAsiaPacific Magazine Multimedia News Blog Countries About Shop
APR 23 2014
PHILIPPINES
MACHO MACHO WOMAN: INTERVIEW WITH EISA JOCSON
BY MARLYNE SAHAKIAN
In an unlikely underground bar in the outskirts of Geneva, as part of the Antigel festival last February, contemporary Filipina dancer and
artist Eisa Jocson delivered Macho Dancer (2013), a solo performance based on her study of male macho dancers, a distinct breed of
performers who haunt Manila’s gay bar scene. Trained as a visual artist and with a background in ballet, Jocson investigates
representations of the body. ArtAsiaPacific sat down with the artist to discuss her views on exposing gender biases, the politics of
seduction and what constitutes Filipino identity.
EISA JOCSON performs Macho Dancer, 2013. Photo by Giannina Ottiker. Courtesy the artist.
In your solo Death of the Pole Dancer, first performed at the 2011 Transit festival in Berlin, you portray a sensual female dancer, moving
vertically up, down and around the pole, with almost mechanical precision. In Macho Dancer, however, you completely transform your
body movements into those of a man. How did you learn to dance like this?
For Macho Dancer, I often visited a bar called Adonis close to my house. This club became my macho school where I asked macho dancers to
become my mentors. In the beginning, when I invited them to teach me in my house, they would bring a back-up person with them. They did
not really trust my request and indeed, it is strange for a young woman to ask for macho dancing lessons. I would also study YouTube videos
and recordings of my macho lessons at home. I copied the movements and practiced everyday, recording myself on video and reviewing what
needed to be improved.
Your rendition is incredibly accurate, the audience sees a young man dancing on stage, with your cowboy boots and shorts. How did you
achieve that degree of control in your facial expressions and body movements?
I went to the gym! That made a huge difference in how I approached macho dancing. I became aware of my muscles and how to engage them
in movement. I learned a whole new body language—posture, stance, walk, gestures, gaze, ways of gyration and undulation—all through the
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physical quality of my body and my muscles.
EISA JOCSON performs Macho Dancer, 2013. Photo by Giannina Ottiker. Courtesy the artist.
How did this develop into the Macho Dancer theme?
It was only when a foreigner friend pointed out that he had never seen this kind of macho dancing before in clubs outside of the Philippines
that I started to take an interest in macho dancing. I became more and more fascinated by the physical quality and vocabulary of this type of
performance and started researching how it all began.
Macho dancing is performed by young men for both male and female clients. It is an economically motivated language of seduction that
employs notions of masculinity as body capital. The language is a display of the glorified and objectified male body as well as a performance
of vulnerability and sensitivity. The music used in macho dancing is mostly power ballads, sung by artists such as Mariah Carey or Celine
Dion, as well as rock and soft rock, like Metallica and Scorpions.
These kinds of love songs from the ’80s and ’90s are heard everywhere in Manila, when riding jeepneys or on the radio. What is this
fascination with nostalgic music?
Yes, this music is pervasive in Metro Manila. I find that the movements of these macho dancers are really dictated by this type of music—they
physicalize a kind of limbo state that is neither here nor there. Their bodies move through thick nostalgia, seemingly in slow motion and
stretched over time.
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EISA JOCSON, sketches from the “Philippine Macho Academy” exhibition at the Jorge B. Vargas Museum, 2014, Quezon City. Courtesy the artist.
At one point in your performance, the music and smoke machines turn off and we just see and hear your body physically pounding the
stage as you throw yourself onto your knees and gyrate. It’s very different from pole dancing, isn’t it?
It’s quite the opposite. Pole dancing is vertically oriented and works with the illusion of lightness and grace, while macho dancing is
horizontally oriented, and works on the illusion of weight and volume. It’s more compact.
You have also created sketches of your Macho Dancer work, which were presented at your recent show at the Jorge B. Vargas Museum in
Metro Manila. Can you tell us more about these?
The sketches were made for the “Philippine Macho Academy” exhibition and are a first draft. They are straightforward and didactic, and help
illustrate and break down the physical principles of macho dancing. The process of deconstructing the movement vocabulary by text and
illustration helped me to clarify and define the physical principles in macho dancing that I experienced.
The Philippine Macho Academy is a fictive structure or institution that serves as a classroom where the principles of macho dancing are
fleshed out and conveyed. The exhibition is a documentation of my research and an articulation of the vocabulary of macho dance
movement. It comprises artifacts, texts, drawings, video, installation and performance. I offered introductory workshops every Friday of the
exhibition at the museum. Approximately six to eight people showed up each time.
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Jocson’s Basic Macho Dance Manual, part of the “Philippine Macho Academy” exhibition at the Jorge B. Vargas Museum, 2014, Quezon City. Courtesy the artist.
You have worked with other dancers in the past, any upcoming collaborations? What themes will you be working on next? Currently, I’m researching the japayuki phenomenon in Japan, where exported Filipino entertainers perform in what are known as
“salarymen clubs.” I’m thinking about naming this piece “The Hostess” and it would become part of a trilogy, after Death of the Pole Dancer
and Macho Dancer. All of my work converges around this theme of the Filipino body and its labor capital in both the local and global
entertainment industry.
I’ll be working on a new creation with Daniel Kok, a Singaporean choreographer and pole dancer, as well as with choreographer Arco Renz on
the subject of pole dancing in a work that will premiere in Singapore later this year.
Learn more about Eisa Jocson’s work here.
Marlyne Sahakian is the Philippines desk editor for ArtAsiaPacific.
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Spot.PH
On the Spot: Eisa Jocson on Being Macho, a Dancer, and a
Woman
Eisa Jocson, photo from her official website
(SPOT.ph) After the spectacular launch of her exhibit, and we mean to use an adjective rooted in the word spectacle,
Eisa Jocson proceeded to the next phase of her performance: passing the figurative baton. The attendees of her free
workshop (the last session of which will be held this Friday, March 7) were a mix of college students and people who
gave in to their curiosity. Jocson was initially just another onlooker herself.
The All­Important Question: Why?
“It was 2010, some friends and I decided to check out a bar. I immediately found the physical vocabulary fascinating,
but it didn’t occur to me to study it. At the time, I was collaborating with someone from Brussels, focusing on pole
dancing in our research on erotic dancing.” Jocson revealed, relating the story casually—as though we were simply
talking about something as trivial as the weather.
When asked if she ever considered the fact that she’s a woman before she took on the challenge, her nonchalance
doesn’t dissipate. “I think it’s inevitable that the performance will draw discourse. At this point, there’s so many layers
to it because you can talk about the social context of the marginal group performing it, selling the body, and of course,
objectification."
She added, "Ako, minsan, hindi ko alam kung saan ilulugar ‘yung sarili ko in that loop because as a woman, I’m
already objectified. Tapos, I perform a dance that objectifies a male…so there’s some form of re-objectification there. I
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don’t know. I think sometimes, what the audience sees comes from their own personal background.”
Forms and Social Norms
Jocson acknowledges that being a woman performing a “macho” dance will inevitably draw attention, but for her, it
seems incidental. It’s evident to us that she thinks of herself as a dancer or a performer first, before anything else.
When she performed for the Queer New York Arts Festival in 2013, the androgyny in her features helped the audience
understand the play between power and weakness, as “the strong image of a male body is objectified.”
Post-workshop, a student shared his thoughts about feeling less masculine after doing the undulations of macho
dancing. It is an interesting perspective, which Jocson did not exactly take into consideration when she was beginning
her research. She saw it for what it is: dance.
As Li Shang from Mulan puts it, “How do I make a man out of you?”
“It was a huge challenge for me as a woman. My background is pole dancing, and I also did burlesque and ballet, so all
the while I was thinking, kaya ko ba ‘to?” she said, referring to the very masculine vocabulary of the dance. To prepare
herself for the performance, Jocson hits the gym and bulks up. “I appreciated the dance more when I started
developing my body. It’s a showcase of the human form kasi.”
“Kapag inaral mo siya, mararamdaman mo yung, oh my God, ang hirap pala niya!” Jocson talks about dance as the
language that some may perceive it to be, and as she learned the vocabulary of macho dancing, it began to change her
in some ways—she became more forward, more matter of fact, and a change in wardrobe was involved. After all, her
more developed “maskels” don’t really go well with dresses. She just laughs about it.
Macho Mentors
Her mentors—the men who worked in “those” bars—didn’t really fully understand what a girl like her was trying to do
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(“Inisip na lang nila weird ako,” Jocson explained), but they did delight in someone recognizing their craft.
“They’re actually very strict, and also, very supportive of each other. Kapag may kasama sila na may gagawing new
move, makikita mo sila sa tabi [cheering].” She explained that dancers have their signature moves and that copying is
frowned upon, so even she had to develop her own choreography for her performance.
Subtle suggestions. Photo by Goks
Spot the Difference: Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike and Lino Brocka’s Macho Dancer
As her research progressed, the difference between “male strippers” and “macho dancers” surfaced. The Western
choreography had a Trance music base, whereas our version relies on power ballads.
“With the Western dancing, the movements are fast, aggressive, and sharper. Ang galing nga, dito sa atin the dancers
are able to stretch time. They’re able to manipulate it, it’s very dynamic. They have a relationship with the space
around them.” The admiration for the choreography is obviously there as Jocson describes the almost primal
movement that the macho dancers do on stage, where they are almost on all fours, “Lupang­lupa yung galaw.”
Woman as Man—as in mankind, not just having the biological parts
Jocson continued to talk about the culture of the marginalized group and how, as she was being trained by the
Customer Care Assitance (CCA, or the new term for sex workers), they have a very limited knowledge of the world that
she was taking their craft to.
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In celebration of women’s month, it was exciting to see someone transcending (not transforming) her femininity.
“There’s an organic understanding to the dance when you perform it and when you see it,” she stated, and it is clear
that she is moving in a world where this kind of discourse can occur. The resolution of the conflict of seeing a woman
dancing as a man (who is, in a way, celebrating what is masculine...but is being feminized due to the association of
objectification with women) is entirely up to the people who will encounter these “anomalies” in life.
Flashback for perspective: Jocson in 2010, as a pole dancer
Jocson doesn’t see her art as a way for macho dancing to be institutionalized the way pole dancing has been as a fitness
regimen, because she recognizes that there is a right time and audience for this kind of spectacle. You need not rub it
in people’s faces, but hopefully, those who do chance upon her performance get the encouragement to think about the
society where macho dancing moves.
It’s a very Pinoy dance, and our culture is embedded in the undulations of these entertainers.
http://www.spot.ph/print_article.php?id=55797&post_name=on-the-spot-eisa-jocson-on-being-a-woman-macho-dancer
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7/8/2014
Pinay challenges Euro art scene with hyper-masculine 'Macho Dancer' | Lifestyle | GMA News Online
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Lifestyle » Art and Culture
Pinay challenges Euro art scene with
hyper­masculine 'Macho Dancer'
August 25, 2013 4:00am
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There is much slithering and come­hither looks in the performance called “Macho Dancer”, which
Filipina dancer Eisa Jocson is taking around Europe's performance­art scene. And the unexpected
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In “Macho Dancer”, Jocson emulates a dance unique to young males in seedy bars of the
Philippines. First performed in spring 2013 under the residency and support of Workspacebrussels
and Beursschouwburg, it aims to challenge “our perception of sexuality and questions gender as a
tool for social mobility.”
“With the performance I wish to share and give physical shape to my questions about the
phenomenon 'macho dance' and all that it brings along,” said Jocson in the Workspacebrussels
website.
“I become a copy of a copy,” she added, “I am taking a hyper­masculine vocabulary of movement in
order to challenge gender stereotypes.”
Jocson explained that the bars where the macho dance is performed inhabits patriarchal structures
“specific to the Philippines, but also points at patterns and stereotypes of gender and sexuality that
are in place on a much larger scale.”
Roles are simply reversed in macho bars, with the male objects the subject of consumption for
clients.
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Jocson declared, “Macho clubs and their activities are not a space of resistance, but a marketplace
to consume male objectification.”
“Beyond the context of the Philippines,” she said, “I want to challenge our conceptions of gender,
sexuality and seduction.”
Her decision to create her performances was also influenced by a need to challenge, “to transform or
to eventually destroy my image as a woman, as well as my image as an objectified pole dancer. To
show that gender can be seen differently, or even can be objectified differently.”
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In the Workspacebrussels page, Jocson said that Macho Dancer is a direct sequel to her previous
work, Death of the Pole Dancer.
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“The pole dancer reincarnates as a macho dancer. The destruction of one persona gives birth to
another,” said Jocson.
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Jocson revealed how she got into pole dancing in an interview with Cobra.be, a Dutch art website.
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/323510/lifestyle/artandculture/pinay-challenges-euro-art-scene-with-hyper-masculine-macho-dancer
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7/8/2014
Pinay challenges Euro art scene with hyper-masculine 'Macho Dancer' | Lifestyle | GMA News Online
Kape at Balita: Mga
katutubong sayaw, gamit
sa nauusong dance
workout na 'Yeba'
“It was during my last year in university, and my aunt invited me to join a pole dance class. When I
started it, I didn't stop,” said Jocson, who was featured in the website for her piece, Up, which she
performed at a beach in Oostende for the 2012 Dansand! Festival.
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mga tradisyunal na sayaw
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Jocson believes that pole dancing has great potential for artistic discourse. During her Asia­Europe
Generalists in Sojourn (AEGIS) residency, she “probed themes such as sexuality and space,
sexualisation of culture, sociology of the body, normalization and surveillance.”
The struggle with sexuality is apparent in her works. When asked why she chose pole dancing as her
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primary medium of expression, she said in the same interview with Cobra.be, “I think it's [pole
dancing] very feminine and masculine at the same time. You need strength and stamina, and you
gain this by time and discipline.”
“At the same time, it's very sensual and soft; so I think this tension between this very feminine way of
being and a very masculine physical exertion of energy and strength is a very good combination, and
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I'm very attracted to it,” explained Jocson.
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Jocson is an associate director and senior instructor at Pole Academy Philippines. She graduated
from Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines, Diliman.
Her other works include Stainless Borders, which started in Manila and expanded to other countries
under her AEGIS residency, and Death of the Pole Dancer, commissioned by the In Transit
Performance Art Festival 2011 during her residency in Nadine.
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Macho Dancer is touring Europe and is featured in performance festivals such as ImPulsTanz in
Vienna, Nooderzon in Groningen, Tanz im August in Berlin, and Theater Spektakel in Zurich.
After Macho Dancer, Jocson is set to form the Japayuki Project, a research project on Filipina
hostesses in Japanese night bars. — Rie Takumi/DVM, GMA News
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Eisa Jocson | Video & Sound Macho Dancer, 2013 Eisa Jocson at ImPulsTanz, Vienna, Austria, 2013 Footage of Macho Dance workshop, 2013 Death of a Pole Dancer, 2011 Additional text: Eisa's Research for Death of a Pole Dancer: during her Asia­Europe Generalists in Sojourn (AEGIS) residency program at FoAM in Brussels.