Audacious

What do you get when you put a ballet company, three choreographers, and eleven rock bands together? The most daring ballet performance Manila has seen in years!

Ballet Philippines got together with Rock Ed Philippines to put together [rock] Supremo as part of the year-long celebration of the birth anniversary of Andres Bonifacio, the father of the Philippine Revolution against Spanish colonial rule. Last Saturday, my husband and I watched the single show where the bands performed live. I loved it! I couldn't take photos of the actual performance, of course, and these were taken after the ballet ended. I have to apologize for their quality—the Cultural Center of the Philippines does not allow cameras inside the entire building so I had to use my phone.
  The ballet was episodic, with one song from each of the eleven bands for each episode. The last song was by Radioactive Sago Project, one of the most popular bands in the country right now, and which refuses to be boxed into a single musical genre.
  After the standing ovation, the audience couldn't let them go, and they gamely played a few more songs. And that's when things went a little riotous on stage. (Yes, that's one of the crew taking photos on the stage.)
  And the dancers of Ballet Philippines! Oh my goodness, after a two-hour performance, they still had the energy to have a pop dance showdown. (And yes, even the dancers were taking photos of each other and of the audience.)
  All I can say is, if you're going to have a dance showdown with professional dancers, you better be one yourself.

Bravo, Ballet Philippines! Bravo, Rock Ed Philippines!

Dance!

The Halili-Cruz School of Ballet was established in 1985 by Shirley Halili-Cruz. This is the main studio along Quezon Boulevard, but they have four other branches in Metro Manila, three of which are within the campuses of academic schools.

Pride and joy

Ligaya (which means "joy") Fernando-Amilbangsa is a scholar, artist, dancer and cultural conservationist. She lived for two decades among the various indigenous peoples of the Sulu Archipelago, researching, documenting and trying to put into words the language of their music and dance. Aside from her research, workshops and conference lectures, she was one of the founders of the AlunAlun Dance Circle, which seeks to revive and nurture interest in ancient Filipino art forms.

Live!

Friday, March 26, was the awarding of the 2009 Gawad Buhay!, the Philstage Awards for the Performing Arts, at the Tanghalang Aurelio Tolentino of the Cultural Center of the Philippines. This is only the second year of the award, which recognizes and pays tribute to Filipino artists in theater—plays, musicals and dance. Depending on how it's accented, the word buhay can mean life, live or alive; in this case, the name of the award refers to the fact that the award is for live performances.




The awarding was broken up into several sets, with various groups performing excerpts from their 2009 season. The most electrifying performance for me was that of Ballet Philippines. Candice Adea, who won a Gawad Buhay! for Best Female Lead Performance in Dance, and Angel Gabriel danced an excerpt from Evacuation, choreographed by Bam Damian. (Please pardon the noise and fuzziness of this photo; the conditions were almost too much for my little camera and I was forced to maximize the ISO.)




To showcase the works of Filipino visual artists, and also as an added incentive for theater groups to strive to garner awards every year, the trophies of Gawad Buhay! will always be different. The 2009 trophy is created by Don Salubayba from Davao City. It portrays a dancing bulul, the rice god of the Northern Philippines' indigenous peoples. The three faces of the figure represent music, dance and theater.




A notable difference between this year's awarding ceremony and last year's is the number of artists who attended. Last year, it was easy to organize the small group onto the stage for their photo. This year…




Chaotic is a mild word to describe what happened during the photo opportunity, but I love it. Half a dozen performing arts groups on one stage, happy faces showing pride in their awards, and a gaggle of friends, relatives and colleagues trying to get photos. As a scriptwriter friend told my husband after the ceremony, the artists now own the awards. And that can only bode well for Gawad Buhay!, Philstage and Philippine performing arts.

For those interested, Gibbs Cadiz posted the complete list of 2009 Gawad Buhay! winners in his blog.

Ballet as educational entertainment

The teenagers yesterday were lined up to watch Ballet Manila's original two-act Filipino ballet "Alamat: Si Sibol at Si Gunaw" (Legend: Bloom and Doom). Based on an illustrated children's book written by Ed Maranan, the ever-old, ever-new story contrasts love of family vs. love of power and teaches children to care for our environment. The original choreography and the costumes were based on Filipino folkloric traditions, most of them from Filipino Muslim culture. The production was a spectacle of colors and special effects, with the mother goddess Luningning (Brilliance), danced by Lisa Macuja-Elizalde, flying between heaven and earth on a moving platform attached to a track on the ceiling or using a harness. Ballet purists would have gone into conniptions, and at first, I also found it odd to see ballerinas in tribal costumes dancing en pointe but then I thought, "Why not?" Who says that ballets have to have tutus and European costumes? When I got over that hump, I could accept the production for what it was and had a grand time. The teenagers obviously had no such preconceptions and thoroughly enjoyed the ballet, judging from their enthusiastic applause throughout the performance.

Unbelievable

Would you believe hundreds of 16 to 18 year old first year college students orderly and patiently lined up to watch a ballet? By the time Ballet Manila's performance started in the Aliw Theater, there were about a thousand of them. And even more astounding, they actually enjoyed it! Tomorrow, I'll show you why.

Ongaku in Motion

One of the perks of working at a university is the wide range of learning opportunities right at our doorstep. And no, they are not all dry lectures. Last month, the Ateneo de Manila's Japanese Studies Program, with the assistance of the Japan Information and Cultural Center of the Embassy of Japan, celebrated the Philippines-Japan Friendship Month with "Ongaku in Motion." Ongaku means music in Japanese. The first half of the program featured traditional Japanese music and dance. This is a koto, which is the national instrument of Japan.



After several pieces of koto music, played by the Director of the Japanese Studies Program and a member of the University of the Philippines Koto Ensemble, one faculty member performed a Nihon Buyo dance. It was fascinating with its slow, exact and refined movements.



Unfortunately, I couldn't stay for the second half of the program, which featured J-pop and anime music performed by the students.

The Igorot dances a paralytic

Biag Gaongen is currently my favorite male dancer in Ballet Philippines. He traces his ancestry to an Igorot tribe from Sagada in the Mountain Province, located in the Cordillera mountain range, which is also where Baguio City is nestled. During the 2008 Gawad Buhay! awarding ceremony back in February, Biag performed an excerpt of his role as Apolinario Mabini in the full-length dance "La Revolucion Filipina." Like Andres Bonifacio yesterday, Mabini was also a revolutionary against Spain's colonial rule and he wrote the Philippines' first constitution. He contracted an illness early in 1896, the same year the Philippine Revolution started, which resulted in the paralysis of his legs. All of Ballet Philippines' dancers are trained in classical ballet but every year they have at least one performance where the movements and choreography are closer to Filipino ethnic and tribal dances than ballet, hence the bare feet. I have to admit that I like those performances better than the classical ballet pieces—they are so much more primal and, therefore, emotionally powerful.

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We're off for the weekend (it's our 13th wedding anniversary on Monday!) so I'll see you all again in time for the City Daily Photo June Theme Day. The July poll is still ongoing and the results so far are very tight. I hope all the CDP bloggers will go to the forum to vote—your two choices can still make a big difference! Happy weekend, everyone!