About the Performance

Eisa JOCSON is a choreographer, dancer, and visual artist based in Manila. Trained as a visual artist with a background in ballet, a key concern in her work is the question of representation and visibility of the Philippine body.

In this exhibition, we see a karaoke video that combines song and dance performances inspired by folk rituals and contemporary pop songs. Through studying their evocative power, songs ascribed with different influential meanings in Filipino culture are distilled into a growing archive of extracts of phrases, songs and dance routines. For JOCSON, they represent collective notions of femininity to different generations in the Philippines. As an on-going project, JOCSON is using the archive to ambitiously map out a contemporary adaption of the ancient ‘epic’ tradition in order to preserve this memory.

The Filipino Super-KTV-Woman Band is a performance by an all-female trio. Together with her two co-singers Bunny CADAG and Cathrine GO, the performance connects an exploration of migrant labor with formative moments of feminine empowerment through the phenomenon of KTV. By referencing a wider history of song and dance culture through influences pre-dating the colonial era up into the contemporary, JOCSON channels the spiritual qualities of these songs into a new ritual that unpacks not only their affective potential, but also explores the colonial formation, and socioeconomic conditions of a Filipino show band.

About the Artist

Born in 1986, Eisa Jocson currently lives and works in Manila. She is a contemporary choreographer and dancer from the Philippines, originally trained as a visual artist with a background in ballet. From pole to macho dancing to hostess work, Eisa investigates the labour and representations of the dancing body in the service industry. She is also concerned with identity and gender formation, as well as Filipino social mobility. Her work has toured extensively in major performing arts festivals and biennials worldwide, including Tanz im August, Berlin (2013 & 2015), Zurich Theater Spektakel (2012, 2013, 2015, 2017), Theatre der Welt, Germany (2014), Asia Triennial of Performing Arts, Melbourne (2017), and Sharjah Biennial (2019).