In this Gathering Eisa Jocson will go through her personal archive of movement research and training, sharing the narratives and processes behind the multiple bodies inhabiting her artistic practice. She will focus on the works: Macho Dancer (2013), Princess (2017) and maybe Manila Zoo (2021) for the physical sharing. 

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 to Superwoman to Zoo animals – capital is the driving force of movement pushing the indentured body into spatial geographies. A host and disruptor, her practice is an embodied archive of Filipino labor.

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 HAPPYLAND series, Part 1: Princess 2017), a duet with Filipino performance artist Russ Ligtas hijacks the embodiment of Snow White. Part 2: Your Highness (2017), a collaboration with 5 dancers from Ballet Philippines, on the formation of standardized bodies for export. Part 3: Manila Zoo (2021), a pandemic livestream theatre work on the politics of gaze and spectacle within systems of labor and enclosures in the Disney empire, the Zoo and ones own room. The series continuous to investigate Filipino labor, 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, DE and Manila Zoo, was selected for the Impulse Theater Festival 2022, DE.

 She was commissioned by Sharjah Biennale 14 to produce  The Filipino Superwoman Band (2019), a work on the affective labor of Overseas Filipino Musicians. New iterations of the work have been commissioned and exhibited widely; SuperWoman KTV Video Installation (2019) and PASYOKE (2020). TFSB2020: Superwoman, Empire Of Care a video work won the 2021 SeMa-HANA Award at the Seoul MediaCity Biennale. She is a recipient of the 2018 Cultural Centre of the Philippines 13 Artists Award, winner of the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award 2019 and received the 2023 Tabori Award International in Germany.