By emulating and becoming the Macho Dancer, she also disembeds the sociocultural and economic frames that ultimately expose this perfect normative body as a constructed body. The very act of this woman performing a gender loop veers attention towards her body as a product. The performance thus generates a “gender loop” in which the performer and audience are entangled. Nonetheless, as she engages in a marginal practice that is macho dance, she remains vulnerable and weak, and maintains the status of an objectified woman. The woman performing a macho dance thus assimilates the role of a strong male and by transgressing gender, the performer also appears to up her social status. By embodying a macho dancer, she challenges our perception of sexuality and questions gender as a tool for social mobility: Through his practice, the macho dancer is relegated to a marginal and weak position in society, even though the image he simulates is that of a strong male.
‘Macho Dancer’ is a solo work in which a woman performs macho dance. An economically-motivated language of seduction that employs masculinity as body capital. Macho Dancing, with its specific movement vocabulary and physicality, is a unique phenomenon in the Philippines. Macho Dancing is performed by young men in night clubs for male – as well as female – clients.
