CHING CHU 仟青

My Body is a Battlefield, and These are My Armours

Creative research presentation

Presented in FIRST Creation Platform, Freespace Dance Festival 2025

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This research project stems from Ching Chu's personal experience as a cisgender heterosexual woman, exploring themes such as objectification, gender inequality, sexual harassment and societal pressure on women to conform to gender norms. Chu seeks to illustrate how women navigate survival and resistance in their pursuit of subjectivity, social justice and autonomy through actions that resemble performance in everyday life.

 

"My body is a battlefield" serves as a metaphor that encapsulates the struggle most women face in asserting bodily autonomy within a patriarchal society. Meanwhile, "these are my armours " symbolises the various states of being she takes on when confronting gender adversity, enabling her to navigate and respond to these challenges. Chu regards “presence” as a form of heightened awareness and ongoing improvised micro-choreography. The dynamic arrangement of subtle movements – such as postures, gestures, facial expressions and sounds – collectively shapes how individuals assert their agency. Through this lens, she dissects the interaction between subjective and objective experiences of women facing oppression, framing the exploration of presence as a practice of resistance that is both corporeal and performative.

 

Another starting point for this project is an incident in which Chu experienced sexual harassment on the Hong Kong subway. By analysing this encounter in a choreographic manner, she recognises that the precision of movement, physical tension and alertness required when facing harassment closely resemble the conditions of stage performance. In such moments, the body is both a vulnerable existence and a medium for resistance. Thus, presence functions as armour: a dynamic, rehearsed yet improvised practice.

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Photo Credit: Eric Hong