August 2013, the Bayanihan National Folk Dance Company, under the aegis of Executive Director Suzie Moya Benitez, choreographer Ferdinand Bong Jose and musical director Melito Vale Cruz, put up a rousing and flamboyant show entitled Celebrations, Through the Eyes of Dance. I was with Guillermo Gómez Rivera during the cocktails, and we sighted Ambassador Alfonso T. Yuchengco, 90-year-old businessman, diplomat and philanthropist (in 2010, Forbes magazine ranked Yuchengco as the 22nd richest Filipino with a net worth of US$260 million), with his elderly wife. Seated beside them was 99-year-old educator and senator, Helena Zoila Tirona-Benitez. Well-heeled guests, dance aficionados, artistes and culture vultures were in attendance as well. After Amb. Yuchengcos stately welcome address, the Bayanihan Rondalla began the show with an evocative overture. The show was divided into four parts, beginning with CLASSICS (a beautiful chant and scarf dance, robust male warriors dance, an entrancing singkil with two women then the princess (my favorite Singkil dancer, actress Ina Feleo); all the dances were fair and lively. Any Filipino folk dance show must really start with a bang, and Singkil is a much-relied on crowd-pleaser. Ina Feleo and Lloyd Callangan make the most entrancing pair! (In the past, it was Richard Recto and Flowbert Orbacedo who alternated playing the Singkil warrior prince). A Spanish aria with an interactive (Filipino rustic) landscape set the stage for RECUERDOS DE AYER, a reminiscing of the Spanish era in the country (a winsome manton dance, a dramatic three-men entrada for Boda de Luis Alonso (interpreted by the fantastic Rondalla) but otherwise the whole dance muted down (that is, the fieriness and loud stamping of flamenco was tamped down) for Filipino sensibilities). Still, I was proud to have been part of the flamenco training of dancers Mar Joseph Maceda-Go and Michael Sorne and Charisse Cabrera), for Boda. In the CALL OF THE LUMADS, it was a veritable chronicle of the Manobos and their dance rituals (the Bayanihan dancers and staff visited their region and had a total immersion, to learn the dances and music). The performance was intervalled by video presentation of the Manobos and the visitors (women dancing with palm leaves, courtship dances, etc). Ina Feleo and Leo Lorilla interpreted the Manobo courtship dance, followed by four men performing with red scarfs and soon by the entire cast. COUNTRYSIDE REVERIES featured very Filipino nuances, a fusion of dancing, songs, games, and skits (bibingka song, an engaging bakya dance, four boys in a rousing bamboo stick number, the lone chanteuse exhorting the audience to appreciate (and preserve?) traditional Filipino games; Sampung Daliri, Luksong Tinik,Luksuan, Jack en Poy, Patintero, Penpen de Sarapen, the chalk game, jumping rope, etc., all with polka flourishes). I was amazed at the whole concept -- of mixing cultural dance with traditional Filipino games; and I wondered, having seen many young people in the audience, how many of them would even know about this obsolete games! The Paruparong Bukid song-and-dance, with 7 butterfly girls, was very enchanting! The audience also reacted appreciatively to the Talangka dance, the dancers imitating fiddler crabs. There was an intricate hat & fan dance with 8 girls (including Ina Feleo, Phemm Corrales, Charisse Cabrera, Leonor Petra Elepano, Ja Albores, Rhen Gabito), the whole thing with polkadot designs that was extremely attractive visually. As finale, there was an unusal, but not unheard of, gambit: Bayanihan had invited a guest musical performer. Surely, the brass-band style razzle-dazzle of the FEU Drum & Bugle Corps, looking like tin soldiers, but performing rousing Filipino marches and Pinoy staple classics, lent itself well to a fiesta finale that capped the whole show well, with frantic swirlings and busy movements of the dancers, and a kaleidoscopic jumble of colors. All in all, a beautifully mounted show from Bayanihan. Congrats to the fantastic dancers, some of them my friends (Ive seen them neck-deep, or knee-deep, or whatever, in training), and to Tita Suzie, Tito Bong, Tito Melito, and the Ambassador Alfonso Yuchengco Foundation!
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 17:16:51 +0000
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