Eisa Jocson

In the Philippines, erotic clubs and bars have their own form of dance: that of Macho dancers, who perform for both men and women, their performances based on a specific movement vocabulary and physicality. In Macho Dancer, Filipino dancer and choreographer Eisa Jocson explores this economically motivated language of seduction, using notions of masculinity as body captial, and proposes a version that transgresses gender codes. Alone on stage, she recreates the muscular tension and compact undulations of this dance to a nostalgic musical repertoire from the 1980s and 1990s. Premiered in 2013, Macho Dancer is part of a trilogy focusing on the eroticisation of the dancing body and its socio-economic dimension, in the course of which Jocson has also explored pole dancing (Death of the Pole Dancer, 2011) and the work of Filipino hostesses in Japanese clubs (Host, 2015).

Eisa Jocson is a contemporary dancer and choreographer from the Philippines. Having trained in classical ballet and visual arts, her work has focused on the intersection between body movement languages and the socio-economic conditions of mobility. Her work exposes body politics in the service and entertainment industry as seen through the unique socio-economic lens of the Philippines. She has toured extensively in major contemporary festivals with her solo triptych, and with her new works under the Happyland series, she continues to investigate Filipino labour, performance of happiness and production of fantasy within the happiness empire.