Philippines | Dance to rediscover your sensuality

(Manila) In a bare outfit, Christelle Guno sways to a Britney Spears hit while grabbing a chair, in a dance class in Manila: like other women, she seeks to ignore taboos and reconnect with her sensuality thanks to to “chairlesque”.

Constructed from the terms “chair” (chair, in English) and burlesque, this genre invented by the host of the place, Noreen Claire Efondo, aims to uninhibit women by allowing them to adopt lascivious postures without fear of the gaze of others. others.

“Ever since I was little, people have made fun of me because I’m chubby. It undermined my self-confidence,” confides Christelle Guno, who says she is delighted with this course.

“I chose it because it’s a place where I feel safe and where I can express my emotions,” she adds. Thanks to this dance, “I feel sexy and I find the self-confidence I was looking for.”

In a country that is 80% Catholic, where questions of sensuality and sexuality often remain taboo, this is precisely the goal that Noreen Claire Efondo set for herself by creating chairlesque in 2017.

“It’s really important to be able to feel sexy and sensual, because our body needs to relax. He needs to free himself from all these inhibitions imposed by the social norm, she emphasizes.

At the beginning, the new students are invited to express themselves about their complexes and their concerns regarding their body and their sexuality.

Then Noreen Claire Efondo teaches them to languidly move their bodies not only while standing, but also lying down or sitting.

” To love yourself ”

An exercise that also attracts mature women, like Henna So. “I want to treat myself to this,” explains this 50-year-old mother, who says she wants to reconnect with her body and her sensuality now that her son is grown up.

“After everything I’ve given for my son’s education, I think it’s time I love myself. Loving yourself is the prerequisite for everything else,” she emphasizes.

An approach shared by Bianca Alvarez, 38, who says she also seeks to “nourish” a sensuality stifled on a daily basis by her role as wife and mother of two children.

The fact remains that this approach aimed at relieving the apprehension of one’s body is not unanimously accepted in the Philippines, where on social networks M^me Efondo is sometimes accused of “shaming” women.

In the country, questions of sexuality remain taboo, particularly for women, notes clinical sexologist Rica Cruz. “The simple fact of talking about sex is considered vulgar, because it is believed that a woman does not have to talk about that,” she summarizes to AFP.

For Christelle Guno, chairlesque allowed complexes to be thrown into the river.

The young woman, who during her first lessons two years ago danced without almost revealing her body, is today perfectly comfortable in a simple bikini.

“It’s really hard in the Philippines. I don’t fit into most people’s beauty standards,” she notes. A call center operator, she says she wants to become a chairlesque trainer “to help other women accept themselves”.