Mucho Machismo Y Pocos Machos

Choreographer/Artistic Director: Rogelio López 

Dancers: Josue Oregel, Kevin Gaytan, Luis Isiordia, Matt Han, Rogelio López

Dance Mission Theater

September 12, 2025

By Kristen Cosby

Pictured: Kevin Gaytan. Photo by Ryan Kwok

Rogelio López and Dancers recently debuted Mucho Machismo Y Pocos Machos, the newest composition by Bay area dancer and choreographer, Rogelio López.  As the title indicates, López staged a narrative piece that examines and disrupts traditional notions of hypermasculinity.

Before he and his troupe of four male dancers took the stage, this hypermasculine, strictly bi-gendered world appeared across the backscreen in the form of clips from classic Mexican films.  

“These films shaped my understanding of how to behave like a man. Although I identified as gay, I felt the need to emulate these characters to avoid being harassed. Hyper-masculinity and toxic masculinity were deeply ingrained in my childhood through these films,”  López told me when I caught up with him after the show.

The clips then segued into a short film featuring López and his dancers, all dressed identically as cowboys, in a recreation of the telenovelas that also haunted López’s youth.  When the dancers took the stage, they wore the same outfits and enacted the same swaggering moves, performing a studied allegiance to traditional masculinity.

The narrative within the piece follows a young gay man engaging in a deep and passionate relationship with a fellow closeted cowboy. There is a clear divide between their behavior alone and their behavior in their cowboy-cohort. The cohort reflects this change, while they initially display moves of strength and folk-dance footwork traditionally reserved for men, slowly, in the scenes where the two lovers negotiate their feelings, the troupe’s clothing comes off. Their bodies perform moves that become increasingly feminine and sexual, until we find ourselves in  some sort of erotic club, where dancers perform shirtless in chaps or thongs.  Much like the films it emulates, the narrative possessed a campy-edge: hyper-romantic, hyper-sexualized and eventually hyper-violent. 

By contrast the choreography pulled together a nuanced mix of contemporary ballet, burlesque dancing and folklorico, traditional folk dances from Mexico in which male roles are often marked by intricate footwork and female roles denoted by the swirl of long, bright skirts. López synthesized folklorico dance steps from Baja, Jalisco and Guerrero and music from Guerrero and Oaxaca, grabbing vocabulary and inspiration from both to build his narrative. The result was both tantalizing and at times hilarious and tender. While Rogellio and his love interest pursue each other over a small table in a restaurant, a highly trained dancer places a chair under one of them by doing a full split. The beauty of this piece lay in what López merges together, creating a world in which bare-butted club dancing and synchronized arabesques are given equal attention.

Clockwise from the left: Josue Oregel, Matt Han, Rogelio López, Kevin Gaytan, and Luis Isiordia. Photo by Yvonne Portra

 ”[At one point] I took a break from folklórico, and over the past few years, I began to reconnect with the community. During this time, I started to notice the machismo and discrimination against queer expression, and I realized how my childhood had been traumatized by these experiences. I was always hiding my true self and felt ashamed of my femininity, often noticing people making fun of my mannerisms. This reflection led me to think about my past relationships with closeted men,” the choreographer told me. 

Alongside the narrative of this relationship, is López’s own becoming. During three interludes,  the troupe of sometimes-sexualized, sometimes-hyper-masculine cowboys vanishes, and López stands alone. Images of flowers and birds move over him and are cast against the backdrop, while he performs solo, his body and its pathways becoming increasingly large and expressive and stereotypically feminine. 

One repeated movement – a bow with arms spread like wings behind him – appears in each of the three solos. In the first two, it seems awkward. But in his final solo, his attendants have dressed him as a female folklorico dancer in a long skirt, hat, and blouse. He bows and spreads his arms again, flaring the gorgeous fabric around himself. As if, this movement, this bold and unapologetic and beautifully feminine splay, had been awaiting the right costume and the right reception the entire night.