PERFORMANCE: HOST [Short Version]

“HOST”
Yokohama Dance Collection
Produced by Yokohoma Red Brick Warehouse No.1 (Yokohama Arts Foundation)
Yokohama Nigiwaiza Small Hall
This is a short version of HOST for public viewing. To View the full performance for a limited time only, click this link:
bit.ly/utsuroiHOST
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About the Performance:
HOST is a one-woman-entertainment-service-machine.

In the hostess clubs of Tokyo, Filipino female and transgender hostesses engage in ‘affective labour’ by performing a version of femininity that caters to Japanese salary men. These hostesses employ mimetic strategies and hybrid identities to survive and succeed.

It is in this role that we first discover Jocson: she is our host, receiving and entertaining the audience as guests. The body then begins its transformation into a database of female body representations. And the performance physically explores mimesis and hybridity by colonizing Jocson’s body with a diversity of female dance languages of entertainment.

HOST invites us to experience and reflect on feminine image formation by displaying forms of entertainment strategies associated with femininity and by exhibiting labor and body politics.

Credits:

Concept, Choreography and Dance: Eisa Jocson, Dramaturg: Arco Renz, Coach: Rasa Alksynte, Sound design and composition: Marc Appart, Shin buyo teacher: Bea Tamura Pascual, Nihon buyo teacher: Oohisui Hanayagi, Light design: Ansgar Kluge, Eisa Jocson, Producer: Tang Fu Kuen
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About the Artist:
EISA JOCSON
http://kxchange.org/artist/eisa-jocson/

Eisa Jocson exposes body politics in the service and entertainment industry as seen through the unique socioeconomic lens of the Philippines. She studies how the body moves and what conditions make it move – be it social mobility or movement out of Philippines through migrant work. In all her creations – from pole to macho dancing and hostess to Disney princess studies – capital is the driving force of movement pushing the indentured body into spatial geographies.

Eisa Jocson is a contemporary choreographer and dancer from the Philippines, trained as a visual artist, with a background in ballet. She has been commissioned by and toured extensively in major contemporary festival with her solo triptych: Death of the Pole Dancer (2011), Macho Dancer (2013) and Host (2015). Macho Dancer won the prestigious Zurcher Kantonalbank Acknowledgement Prize at the Zurich Theater Spektakel in 2013.

In her new series, HAPPYLAND (2017), Part 1: Princess is a duet with Filipino performance artist Russ Ligtas, Part 2: Your Highness is a collaboration with 5 dancers from Ballet Philippines and the third part is set to premiere in Summer 2020. This series continuous to investigate Filipino labour, performance of happiness and production of fantasy within the happiness empire. Princess has been selected as one of the outstanding contemporary productions for the 2018 edition of Tanzplattform, Germany.

She recently premiered a new work commissioned by Sharjah Biennale 2019 titled: The Filipino Superwoman Band, a work that looks into the affective labor of Overseas Filipino Musicians. A recipient of the 2018 Cultural Centre of the Philippines 13 Artists Award, she won the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award 2019.

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This performance is part of UTSUROI Live Archives Series of kXchange.org Virtual Center for Contemporary Performance Philippines. Powered by Komunidad X The Japan Foundation, Manila
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