First watch this video. Then, after you’ve finished drooling, read on and I’ll tell you all about Macho dancing plus an in-depth interview with Eisa Jocson the contemporary choreographer, dancer and visual artist, from the Philippines you’ve just been seduced by.
MACHO DANCER from Eisa Jocson on Vimeo.
Macho Dancing is basically male strip dancing. In the Philippines this is quite popular amongst both male and female spectators and a unique movement vocabulary has been developed by the dancers. Eisa has researched this dance form, broken it down and managed to embody it into her ballerina, pole dancer and very female body.
I participated in two Macho Dance classes finding it utterly fascinating how small movements and body language can enable one to project an image beyond their born gender. I was quite surprised when more than anything the class resembled Chi Gong classes I was practicing in china.
The principles are simple:
- Connect your breath with your movement.
- Interconnect your entire body putting your whole weight behind every movement and move as if you are immersed in sticky dough.
- If you don’t have the muscles fake the body position muscular people have. Shoulders held back and up, arms always floating away from the body.
- Exaggerate your movement by using opposition, If you want to go down first go up, if you want to go right first go left and also separation of your spine.
- And the most important thing – move as if you are the most handsome guy in the world, completely in love with yourself.
Go on try for yourself! It’s fun!
Interview With Eisa Jocson
Both As a Pole and Macho dancer your work has strong elements of seduction. Why do you choose to focus on that and how does it make you feel?
I think it’s a very elementary instinct we all have it. It’s quite raw and open. Desire is desire it doesn’t hide that it is anything else than that. I’m drawn to things that have this taboo because I don’t believe in it and on top of that there is a lot of skill involved, it’s not just desire that happens it’s constructive desire. It’s very precise, it’s craftsmanship.
It’s so normal to me that I forget that it is a taboo. I forget that I am the subject of desire, I approach it quite straight on. What makes me sad is that desire is being pushed to the margins on one side while actually being used by the consumerist main stream and hidden in an allusion in advertisements.
Eisa Jocson
What is the strangest reaction you’ve had to one of your works?
It was an endearing strange one, a gay man wanting to marry me as a macho dancer and woman wanting to be me as a macho dancer. I really like hearing feedback because if you listen they are basically divulging themselves in the process. I feel those that are giving the feedback are in a vulnerable position.
Would you consider yourself or your work Feminist?
I haven’t brushed up on my feminist view. It could be and it could also not be. It depends on the books I am currently reading. It’s shifting and that’s good because it means the work is evolving.
Where did the idea come from to do Macho dancing and how did you train for it and does it affect you?
I was introduced to it by a relative and went to a club and thought it was fascinating and shared it with an artist friend from Singapore. In other places the shows are very different they are more narrative and less focused on the craft of the body.
At the beginning I went to see the shows and slowly slowly I asked them to teach me. It was a difficult process just to be in that space and ask them to teach something they don’t really teach. In the beginning they were a bit doubtful they thought I was baiting them into a bachelorette party, the Macho’s would come with assistants in case something happened and I myself would have a friend to learn with me just in case. This interaction isn’t normal, there isn’t a teacher student relationship in the Macho community. Macho dancing has affected my way of being. People close to me can tell, you become more masculine in the normative sense. It shifts your world view. Today after the Macho class I went to the bank as it was closing, usually I’d sweet talk my way into it but somehow the Macho class affected me and I didn’t find it within me to smile and be gentle.
In Class
Did any of your Macho teacher see one of your performances?
Not yet. It’s a fantasy of mine to actually preform in a Macho club. But it’s quite fragile for the people of the industry. How can they wrap their mind around a woman preforming a Macho dance as an artistic practice? Even in the performing dance world it’s a strange thing. I don’t want to come in and impose myself.
What does the Queer community think about your work?
Queer people have been quite enthusiastic I didn’t expect that most of the support would come from them. A transsexual that saw my performance in Zurich was asking me if we do this regularly in the Philippines? If we have a drag king scene? I didn’t even know what that was and I told him that it doesn’t really exit. There were some opposing views from (gay) men who haven’t seen my work and don’t think it can work. After they do see it I think they become confused. It’s quite magical and charming for me when they do find it’s seductive.
In class you said that Macho is all about taking over as much space while Pole dancing is about the illusion of being light and not taking up space what do you think of this from a Gender perspective?
Here (in the Philippines) the stereotype of the Genders are quite strong. The dances are pointing to the hyper of both. I hope one day they can be combined but I’m not sure how it’s going to happen.
Do you feel a different objectification as a pole dancer or macho dancer?
When I’m pole dancing, since I’m a woman doing pole dancing the taboo is much closer to the gender stereotype. They always assume that the act is sexual or objectified because I’m a women in skimpy cloths . In Macho it works better because I’m an outsider, a woman, so it’s fascinating. There is a confusion that you have to manage, how to put you in a box and categorize this object.
Are you trying to fight this objectification?
It’s part of the discourse, it’s a language that is made for objectification so it’s inherently there. But what’s interesting is when you manage to make it disappear while still staying within the form. To still look at the pole dancer, at the same body, but gain this shift in perspective. You can look at my performances and objectify it in a consuming way but if your intention is not to consume you won’t look at the person as an object.
I wouldn’t say my work is a rebellion. I don’t see anything wrong with what I’m doing, although I’m very careful in the Philippines. I haven’t actually performed the entire piece here, just more subtle pieces focusing on the money transaction. I didn’t take off my top which I do in the Macho Dancer piece. I think if I did that here it would be labeled as a provocation and all the other things might disintegrate. It’s easy to sensationalize my work, A woman doing Macho and the media can just invent some fantastic story about my intentions.
What are your actual intentions with your work?
Just to question constructs that are seemingly fixed or already put in place by society, family history or how you’re brought up. Even just to question your movement habits. Like the habit to cross your legs and take up so little space. Questioning this opens up a different world.
Eisa will be preforming in Switzerland on the 11-12 of February
On the 17th she’ll be back in manila for an interactive exhibition about macho dancing./p>