macho dancer by eisa jocson — WTP05 © giannina ottiker
macho dancer by eisa jocson — WTP05 © giannina ottiker
macho dancer by eisa jocson — WTP05 © giannina ottiker
macho dancer by eisa jocson — WTP05 © giannina ottiker
macho dancer by eisa jocson — WTP05 © giannina ottiker
macho dancer by eisa jocson — WTP05 © giannina ottiker
productions
MACHO DANCER
EISA JOCSON
Last updated : 18/11/2012PRINT THIS PAGEOutline
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
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".
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 ‘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 hyper-masculine 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 self-image 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 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.