CHOREOGRAPHER | PHOTOGRAPHER

As a professional dancer, I wanted to venture out and learn various styles of dance and expression, which ultimately led me to learn Tango. After understanding its origins with the locals in Buenos Aires, I came to find that men used to dance with one another to attract and have the possibility to dance with a woman. I found this to be an interesting topic on many levels. One side of it is that there is still such a stigma held behind a male dancer, and the other was the human animalistic approach to learning the style in order to get a woman. With this in mind, it made me start to question myself about masculinity and what that means to me. Learning the style of Tango made me have to confront a certain ego I was holding onto as a dancer. After calling myself a professional for all these years, I stepped into the studio believing I would be immediately good. I slowly started to realise that this was just my ego taking the better of me, ultimately prohibiting myself from further growth. Now when we see two males in close proximity we normally gather preconceived ideas about their sexuallity. So with that in mind, I thought it would be an interesting concept to have two males find themselves in a place where they are having to battle their ego and struggle, in order to find them in an embrace where they are able to show signs of vulnerability. Society seems to have normalized this toxic masculinity, filled with all its aggression and hate, from watching a fight in a football match to a saturday night outside a club. In a never ending topic of exploration, this work has been a real eye opener and a way for me to dive into this topic and answer my own personal question.