Last Dance: Hubo’t Hubad, Beyond the Bodies
I went to Halxyon Club in Poblacion on August 27 for the press conference of Last Dance: Hubo’t Hubad, and the obvious thing to talk about would be the bodies.
The production makes no effort to hide them. Five attractive men, shirtless key visuals, harnesses, a male revue bar, an 18+ advisory, and partial and full nudity are all part of what is being sold. Even the title tells you exactly where your eyes are supposed to go first.
But after listening to the cast together and then speaking with each of them more closely, I came away thinking the bodies may actually be the easiest part of this show to understand.
Written and directed by Jojo Urquico, Last Dance follows five performers inside the dressing room of a struggling male revue bar on what may be their final night. There is a storm outside, the possibility of a police raid, and five men carrying their own dreams, relationships, fears and compromises into one room.
It also opens the door to something very easy to do from the outside: judge the profession before bothering to understand the person doing it.
Maybe you are not Ace, Jay, Dodong, Mark or Rafa. Maybe you are actually the person looking in from the outside, already thinking you understand what kind of men they are because of what they do for a living.
That is probably a more uncomfortable, and more interesting, place to start.
Five men, five different energies
The afternoon started with the cast and creative team together for a group Q&A. What I appreciated more came after. Members of the press were divided into smaller groups and each actor went around from one group to another, giving us the chance to talk with them in a more intimate and personal setting.
That was where Gerald Magallanes, Paolo Domingo, John Segui, Kriszan Manipon and Robbie Padilla stopped feeling like five men assembled for a poster. Their backgrounds are very different, and so were the personalities we met that afternoon.
There was a veteran stage performer, somebody already deeply connected to Halxyon, a model and pageant performer, an improviser still openly finding his way through different creative spaces, and a photographer stepping out from behind the camera. That mix made the ensemble more interesting before I had even seen them perform the play.
Gerald Magallanes as Ace
Gerald brings the stage experience. He has spent more than a decade working as an actor, dancer and choreographer, with multiple Aliw Award nominations along the way, and there is an assurance in the way he carries himself that you do not need to be told about.
What I liked is that the experience did not make him feel distant. He comes across like somebody comfortable in his craft, which is different from somebody trying to prove that he is the most experienced person in the room.
It makes sense for Ace, the fearless one, because Gerald already understands how a performer can command attention before saying very much at all.
But fearlessness itself can become something a person learns to perform very well. That is what makes Ace potentially more interesting than simply being the confident one. I want to see where that confidence ends, and what Gerald finds once the character can no longer hide behind it.
Paolo Domingo as Jay
Paolo brings a very different energy. There is a certain sophistication in the way he speaks, but he is also warm, candid and genuinely easy to talk to.
Nothing felt overly rehearsed. There is polish, but not the kind that makes you feel like every answer has gone through three rounds of approval before reaching you.
That openness suits Jay, the dreamer of the group, somebody still imagining that his life can become something more. Paolo has worked in both film and theater, but he also happens to be a resident DJ at Halxyon.
That gives him an interesting connection to the production because he already knows this room not as a theatrical set, but as an actual nightlife space filled with people, music, intimacy and all the social dynamics that come with it.
There was warmth in Paolo that made Jay feel less like a generic young dreamer to me. He comes across as somebody you could easily imagine confiding in, and that could be useful in a story where these men presumably know versions of each other that nobody outside their dressing room gets to see.
John Segui as Dodong
John gave the material a sense of authenticity. There was a familiarity in the way he spoke about the themes and circumstances surrounding the show that made me feel he was not approaching everything purely from the outside.
I do not think every connection between an actor and a role needs to be explained for it to feel genuine. Sometimes you can simply tell when somebody understands the emotional territory he is talking about. John had that familiarity for me.
He also comes from modeling and pageantry, including representing Cainta, Rizal at King of the World Philippines 2025. That means he already knows something about spaces where people look at a body first, assess it, compare it and decide what they think of the person attached to it.
For a play built around men whose bodies are literally part of their livelihood, that background takes on another meaning.
Dodong is described as the heart of the group, funny, caring and protective. John struck me as somebody who can bring something lived-in to that role rather than simply playing “the nice one.” There is a difference between being liked by everybody and wondering if somebody will actually choose you once the surface is no longer enough.
Kriszan Manipon as Mark
Kriszan was refreshingly candid about still exploring different things in his own life and not pretending to be an expert at everything he tries.
He is a theater actor, improviser and artist, but what stayed with me more than a list of disciplines was his comfort in saying that exploration does not automatically mean mastery.
There is humility in that, especially in a creative industry where people are often expected to present themselves as completely certain about whatever they are doing next. Kriszan did not seem interested in performing that kind of certainty. What came through instead was somebody willing to give himself fully to what he is learning and to finding Mark.
I liked that because Mark is the veteran of the group. Experience does not necessarily mean having all the answers. Sometimes it means knowing enough to understand that you never really stop learning, and knowing when survival has started to cost you too much.
Kriszan's own openness could make Mark considerably more human than simply being the guy who has been around the longest.
Robbie Padilla as Rafa
Robbie was the most personal conversation for me.
There is something warm and protective about him, but he was also very articulate in explaining how much deeper Last Dance goes than what people may assume from the promotional materials.
What stood out was that he did not seem defensive about the provocative side of the show. He simply wanted people to understand that it was not the whole thing.
There are bodies in the material because the lives of these characters involve their bodies being looked at, desired and turned into part of the work. But there are still people attached to them.
Robbie normally works as a photographer and visual storyteller, somebody more accustomed to being behind the camera than standing in front of an audience. That makes Rafa, the quiet soul and observer of the group, a particularly interesting fit.
The observer is now playing the observer.
There was also something about Robbie's manner that made his description of the show feel protective of these men rather than promotional. You can look at them and make assumptions very quickly. He made me more interested in what happens once the play gives them enough time to complicate those assumptions.
Not just skin and meat
That is probably the biggest thing I took away from the afternoon. Last Dance: Hubo’t Hubad is not just all skin and meat.
The skin is there. The sensuality is there. The nudity is there. The production is not pretending otherwise, and it does not need to.
But underneath all of that are five people trying to survive, wanting to be loved, trying to make something of their lives and figuring out who they are when the version everyone else sees is no longer enough.
You may not literally find yourself in any of the five characters, but you might recognize the circumstances around them.
Acting confident because everyone expects you to be. Wanting more from life. Looking after everybody else while quietly hoping somebody notices that you need something too. Trying different things without knowing yet where you belong.
Or maybe you recognize something less flattering: being on the outside and deciding you already understand someone because of their work, their body, the clothes they wear, or the kind of place where they spend their nights.
That is where the show becomes more interesting than its poster.
Why Halxyon matters
Halxyon also makes sense as part of the experience. Last Dance is not putting a male revue story inside a conventional theater and asking us to imagine the rest. The audience will already be sitting inside an LGBTQ+ nightlife space, close to the performers and close to whatever happens in that dressing room.
During the press conference, you could already feel how intimate the room is. There is very little distance between performer and audience, which gives Halxyon something close to the feeling of a black box theater.
For Jojo Urquico, that intimacy also brought back a more personal memory.
He spoke with nostalgia about the old Faculty Center in UP Diliman and the kind of stripped-down, intimate theatrical experience he associated with that space. The Faculty Center is gone now, but something about Halxyon's black box quality appeared to bring him back to that kind of theater: close, immediate, adaptable and dependent as much on what happens between performers and audience as on the physical stage itself.
I liked hearing that because it explains why Halxyon feels like more than a clever venue choice.
There is something almost old-school about taking a room that was not built as a conventional theater and allowing the performers, the audience and even the limitations of the space to define the experience together.
For Last Dance, that closeness could be especially important. These are characters whose bodies are already meant to be looked at. Putting the audience only a few feet away removes some of the safety of observing them from a distance.
If Jojo and the cast use that proximity properly, Halxyon could make the difference between simply watching these men and feeling like you have been allowed into the room with them.
The people putting Last Dance together
Last Dance is being presented by JAPS Collectives together with World Theater Productions Guam/Manila, with Halxyon Club as venue partner.
JAPS Collectives is the lead producer, an independent creative production group behind the Manila staging. What feels important here is that this does not come across as a production trying to take queer nightlife, package it somewhere safer and then recreate it for a theater audience.
Halxyon is part of the collaboration itself, and that gives the production access to an environment that already carries the life, intimacy and energy the story needs.
World Theater Productions brings a very different kind of experience into the partnership. The Guam-based company was founded in 2017 and has mounted more than 10 major productions, while involving hundreds of local performers, musicians and backstage artists over the years.
Jojo Urquico has served as its artistic director since 2017, but Last Dance puts him in a different position.
He already has a long career as an actor, singer and director, with credits that include Thuy in Miss Saigon, Angel in Rent, Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet and Tamino in Die Zauberflöte, as well as work in Europe.
This time, however, the words are his too.
Last Dance: Hubo’t Hubad is Urquico's first play as a playwright. He is not simply interpreting another writer's characters. He created Ace, Jay, Dodong, Mark and Rafa, and he is also directing the actors who have to make them believable.
That makes the production feel personal in another way. There are a lot of ideas being carried into one dressing room: masculinity, desire, survival, identity, judgment, ambition, shame, acceptance, chosen family and the difference between being looked at and actually being seen.
It is ambitious material for a first play.
The production team also includes Alex Garcia as production manager, John Paul Ilagan as stage manager and Christian Magallanes as assistant stage manager. It is a relatively intimate production, which probably suits the kind of story they are trying to tell.
The scale does not need to be huge if the five people inside that room feel real enough.
Now I want to see whether it works onstage
This is not a review yet.
I have not seen the full production, and Last Dance still has to prove that everything the cast and creative team talked about can actually work once the lights go down.
But the press conference did exactly what I think a good one should do.
It made me want to see the show.
I want to see these five men together inside that room. I want to see if Gerald's experience, Paolo's warmth, John's authenticity, Kriszan's openness and Robbie's quiet protectiveness actually become Ace, Jay, Dodong, Mark and Rafa once the performance begins.
I want to see if they really feel like men who have worked together, fought with each other, protected one another, kept secrets and somehow become family.
And I want to know whether, by the end, we will still be thinking about the bodies at all.
The bodies got my attention.
The people underneath them are why I want to come back.
Last Dance: Hubo’t Hubad premieres September 29 at Halxyon Club in Poblacion, Makati, with performances continuing in October. Gerald Magallanes, Paolo Domingo, John Segui, Kriszan Manipon and Robbie Padilla lead the cast, with Jojo Urquico writing and directing.
Tickets are priced at ₱700 for front seating, ₱600 for side seating and ₱500 for standing admission through Ticket2Me. The production is strictly for audiences 18 years old and above and contains mature themes, sensual performances, partial nudity and full nudity presented within a theatrical context.
According to the production, a portion of every ticket sold will be donated to Pride PH in support of its LGBTQIA+ advocacy and community programs.