THE DANCING INMATES Imagine the life of prisoners all over the world...Nothing comes in your mind but a dead end of a beautiful life or dreams to live , no help, no hope in a maximum confinement. But not so with the CPDRC DANCING INMATES.They never thought being in jail would give them hope and made them a better person today.CPDRC dancers is a collective of prison inmates in Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC), a maximum security prison in Cebu, in Cebu Province, Philippines where the prisoners perform dance routines as part of their daily exercise and rehabilitation, and many of their performances are filmed and released online, making them a popular feature among fans and veritable online celebrities. Byron F. Garcia, the official security advisor to the Cebu government, is credited for starting a program of choreographed exercise routines for the inmates. He was appointed head of the prison by his sister Gwendolyn Garcia, governor of Cebu Province. The prison is best known for its rendition of Michael Jacksons Thriller video. The prison management has also released a video explaining the concept behind the prison management at CPDRC. History Byron Garcia had originally wanted to introduce a program at Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC) where inmates would exercise for an hour each day. He also claims in a British documentary that his inspiration came while watching the movie The Shawshank Redemption in particular the scene where the sounds of Mozarts Figaro flood the prison yard.Garcia initially introduced an exercise program where the prisoners marched in unison, starting out with marching to the beat of a drum, but moved on to dancing to pop music; he began with one of his favourite songs, Pink Floyds Another Brick in the Wall.He chose camp music such as In the Navy and Y.M.C.A. by The Village People, so macho prisoners would not be offended at being asked to dance. Garcias first upload of prisoner choreography was the Algorithm March, with 967 inmates,but only generated 400 views in its first eight months.The next upload, Thriller, however, enjoyed a massive response. Today, there is not a know -how these prisoners came into not just liking dancing as a form of rehabilitation in prison but made them disciplined daily in their routines inside the jail and made them popular. The prison now even has its own official choreographer teachers, like Vince Rosales and Gwen Laydor. Some prisoners are chosen more prominently for more sophisticated routines while the general prison population (sometimes up to 1,500 inmates) participate with simpler more accessible routines. Implementation in other prisons Byron Garcia, the warden who created the dancing program for the inmates, has put up a team of former Dancing Inmates to spread the message of Music and Dance Therapy to all jails nationwide in the Philippines. This is a pioneering initiative to institutionalize music therapy in other jails, similar to CPDRCs original program, with Cebu former inmates dancing making a tour of three prisons initially, Manila City Jail, Makati City Jail, and Quezon City Jail according to an agreement signed between Resendo M. Dial, chief of Philippines Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) and Byron Garcia on March 26, 2010 as a collaborative effort to introduce music therapy in jail facilities nationwide. On the occasion of the signing of the protocol, Garcia characterized general prison facilities as living hells, because those who are in penology and rehabilitation are missing out the essence of compassion, redemption and restoration in jail management. He added: They are too busy looking for creative ways to punish an offender instead of restoring him to become the human being that he is. We have to look at prisons beyond the cycle of crime and punishment and certainly look inside underlying social, cultural and scriptural implications of rehabilitation. As it is, those creative ways of punishing offenders that have led to restrictive and punitive conditions in jails have also bred demons out of prisoners. Garcia said that this therapeutic protocol of dance and music is meant to restore dignity to people who suffer the stigma of incarceration and restore self-esteem to inmates because they are alienated from society. Therapeutic music and dance is meant to help prisoners cope with their depression and anxiety, improve their well-being as they go through a transition phase and reintegrate to society. Music is a protocol to heal them of emotional and psychological disorders and trauma as a result of the offense or incarceration. He concluded that the experience of the CPDRC Dancing Inmates has proven a clinical breakthrough of using therapeutic music and dance in healing, restoring and rehabilitating inmates to become dignified human beings. This is actually what prompted BMJP to take interest in spreading such a program, he said. A group of former dancing inmates will also tour the countrys prisons for presentations in addition to a series of public performances to increase awareness to the program among the general population. The offshoots of the program can be seen in The Quezon City Dancing Inmates and the Manila City Jail Dancing Inmates programs, greatly structured on the concepts applied in CPDRC. Heres a share of the dance video of the DANCING INMATES. youtube/watch?v=mKtdTJP_GUI
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 09:44:10 +0000