Eisa Jocson, Host
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
Songs: Please Let me Call you Sweetheart by Glenda (Tagalog-Version), Kokuhaku by Ken Hirai, Itako-Dejima, excerpts from Beyoncé (Dance for You), Rihanna (Bad Girl) and Ciara (Body Party), Nobody Nobody by Wonder Girls.
Duration: 55 minutes