‘5 Solos’ Explores Male Bodies in Movement This February

‘5 Solos’ Explores Male Bodies in Movement This February

5 Solos, a dance production that features five male soloists from five different dance companies, is set for a limited run on February 20 at 8 PM and February 21 at 3 PM and 8 PM at WHYNoT, 4/F Karrivin Studios, Building A, 2316 Chino Roces Ave. Ext., Makati.

The production aims to explore male bodies in movement and dance as sites of resistance, self-expression, and rebellion. Featuring Alvin Erasga Tolentino from Co.ERASGA, Rhosam Prudenciado Jr. from LikhaPH, PJ Rebullida from Galaw.Co Dance Theater, Michael Que from Mari Dance, and Al Bernard Garcia from UP Dance, these five artists will perform their solo pieces with projected photography, using videos and photos by Bimpoman.

Alvin Erasga Tolentino‘s work is entitled Offering, a solo that serves as a spiritual offering and a prayer for the world and humanity. This piece is one of seven solo works in Offering, created during the COVID-19 pandemic, honoring and navigating challenging times. Through movement and dance, it embarks on a voyage of energy, reaching our isolated world toward connection.

Tolentino is a Filipino-Canadian contemporary dancer and choreographer who founded the Canadian dance company Co.ERASGA, which is now in its 25th season. His choreographic works explore identity, redress, gender, hybridity, climate action, and cross-cultural collaborations. As an active contributor to the arts milieu, he performs, directs, mentors, consults, curates, and produces.

Rhosam Prudenciado Jr.‘s work is entitled A Body in Negotiation, a solo that reimagines Beautiful Budol: The Hidden Cost of Mounting a Dance Project (2023), a collective work by Transitopia Dance for Neo Filipino 2023, curated and directed by Jay B. Cruz in partnership with Red Lasam and Francesca Casauay. Turning the lens inward, the piece situates his body as a site of ongoing negotiation. Living with a degenerative lumbar condition, he moves between control and collapse, flow and interruption—adapting without denying what is fragile and changing. The work asks: What does it mean to keep moving when movement itself is compromised?

Prudenciado Jr. is a contemporary dancer, choreographer, and educator dedicated to community building and movement exploration. He founded the LikhaPH Outreach Program for Dance and developed the Linear Fluidity Movement Style, reflecting his ongoing research on flow and line. A former artistic director of Airdance Philippines and an Ani ng Dangal awardee, he has worked extensively in international residencies and collaborations across Asia and Europe, continuing his commitment to creating spaces where artists can grow, connect, and collaborate.

PJ Rebullida will be presenting an excerpt from Under a Rock, a visceral exploration of curiosity and the shifting architecture of meaning. The work challenges the human tendency to recoil from the unknown—those things historically deemed “scary,” “dirty,” or “unappealing”—and instead invites a radical closeness.

For this latest staging, the work evolves into a high-concept multimedia dialogue between movement, sound, and shadow, featuring a visual collaboration with photographer Bimpoman, whose “photodeconstructivist” lens adds a layered, ultra-real texture to the piece’s aesthetic identity. Complemented by the raw, improvisational energy of a live score from Mudskipper and Friends, Rebullida transforms the stage into a site of discovery.

Rebullida has danced for Ballet Philippines, Philippine Ballet Theater, Ballet Lüneburg, and Daloy Dance. In 2019, he founded Galaw.Co Dance Theater, where they create original dance theater work and run a dance education program. PJ is also a multi-awarded choreographer and musical theater actor.

Al Bernard Garcia‘s piece is entitled Lore, a work-in-progress performance that places the Filipino male body in dialogue with artificial intelligence. Drawing on shared Austronesian memory between Taiwan and the Philippines, the work asserts the body as a living, remembering archive—beyond nation, language, and code. The work asks: What happens when the Filipino body consults artificial intelligence for its history? As identity and ancestry are defined through data, how might movement, breath, and voice reveal what escapes codification?

Garcia is a Filipino dance artist, choreographer, and educator whose work bridges contemporary movement with Austronesian and Filipino cultural memory. He holds an MFA in Dance Choreography from Nanhua University in Taiwan, where he also spent three years working with Paiwan communities through Tjimur Dance Theatre. He has taught at Guang Ming College and the Philippine High School for the Arts, and continues to develop performance works that explore identity, lineage, and embodied storytelling. His choreography has been presented in Taiwan, the Philippines, and across Asia, including the Dance Now Asia Festival and the Bandung Isola Performing Arts Festival. Garcia is committed to creating dance that is rooted, reflective, and resonant with the community.

Michael Que‘s work is entitled As It Melts, Another Blooms. Que says, “Time drips in silence as the body absorbs the weight of loss. Beneath melting ice, grief gathers in water and memory, tracing the architecture of longing. In remembering my lola, I wear a fragment of her presence—transforming absence into embrace, and finally into embodiment, blooming into the flowers she loved. This work is an offering to a love that endures, reshapes the body, and continues to live beyond loss.”

Que is a Manila-based dance artist who graduated from the Philippine High School for the Arts and UP Diliman, majoring in Dance. He was a member of the UP Dance Company and The Human Expression Dance Company in Singapore, performing in festivals across Asia and the USA. His works include Pavilion IV and A Wanderer in the Night of the World. He won awards at Korea IMDC 2016 and Wifibody.ph 2016, and was a 2018 Yokohama Dance Collection finalist. Formerly the artistic director of Guang Ming Dance Project, he now serves as artistic director of FEU Dance Company and co-founder of the newly formed dance agency Mari Dance.

Ticket prices are P800 (Regular) and P500 (Student with ID). They can be reserved through the group’s Jotform. The production is presented in partnership with Co.ERASGA, LikhaPH, and WHYNoT.