A woman with the body of a macho dancer
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.
Macho Dancer 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.
The very act of this woman performing a gender loop veers attention towards her body as a product. By emulating and simulating the Macho Dancer, she investigates social, cultural, and economical conditions that ultimately unveil this perfect, normative body as a constructed body.
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
In English
Concept, choreography and Performance: Eisa Jocson (PH/BE)
Light Design: Jan Maertens
Music composition: Lina Lapelyte
Coach: Rasa Alksnyte
Dramaturgical advice: Arco Renz
Residency and support: Workspacebrussels, Beursschouwburg, Wpzimmer
