summing up 2009

I'm planning to write a piece about the shows I saw this year, 2009. This is not only brought about by the fact that this year is going to end, but also because we're seriously planning to launch the fourth issue of Runthru soon. That 4th issue was supposed to be released late last year, but we just didn't have the funds nor the time to release it. We (my brother Lucas, who is the magazine's art director, and I) agreed to release Issue 4 this year, anytime this year, but real life happened - he became a daddy and I became corporately employed. And, look, it's now December.

The original 4th issue has a Best of 2008 feature in it, and I'm quite proud of the compilation and felt that it was very definitive of the year that was. Now, however, it is time to write something about 2009. And 2009 proved to be more tricky. I ran into several things that seemed to break my spirit and my belief in this art form that I so loved. Last year, the only problem I had was the magazine was losing too much money and not paying for itself, like we thought it would. This year, while I had found the resources that could keep the magazine alive, there were many other challenges that I had to overcome. Some of which I am still overcoming. But that isn't the point of this blog post.

Many people say that 2009 was a very bad year all around. I am inclined to agree, but it wasn't all that bad. I realized a lot of things this year, I was really put into situations where I was to question what I had set out as my life's work, and whether it was worth all the hassle and stress and pain. However, the year wasn't a total loss because there were good parts as well. And through all the misery and disillusionment, I feel that I came out a much better person, that I have better priorities and a better outlook in general. And because of the trials of 2009, I believe that 2010 will be wonderful.

Thank you for reading me and for waiting patiently for Issue 4. It's going to be a goodie.

Sagip Sining/Art to the Rescue

All dance events will be held at the CCP Rehearsal Hall, which is found at the basement along the corridor of the artist's entrance (where the Buffeteria can be found). See you there! My group, TEAM Dance Studio, will perform at 5pm!

artistic fulfillment

I have to ask, what is artistic fulfillment in dance? Because it doesn't seem to be the same for other art forms. Dancers feel fulfilled when they complete triple pirouettes flawlessly or when they get to do an emilianovich, staying in the air all the way through. But is that artistic? Isn't that a skill you practice over and over until you get it right?

There is a very fine line between what is artistic and what is acrobatic. What is art and what is entertainment? What is art and what is spectacle? Of course, we first have to ask - what is art, in the first place? It is so dangerous to attempt a definition. I used to think, art is what moves you. Now that's dangerous as well. For example, when I first saw the woman with no arm and her partner with no leg in that pas de deux together, I found it hilarious. Now, people are forwarding the clip and posting it up on Facebook as so inspiring, so moving. It almost made me feel bad that I laughed at it before.

Almost.

Coming from a show by somebody who argued with me about artistic fulfillment, I find the need to stop and try to define "artistic fulfillment" first. What does this mean to a dancer? Dancers do not create the choreography, but we add in our little things. Some of us perfect the steps - we are then called virtuosic. Some of us inject so much of ourselves into the steps that we become one with the steps, that we become the dance. However, I don't think these dancers would go out and say, "I am artistically fulfilled." That would be too weird.

Instead, dancers say they are artistically fulfilled when they find themselves dancing at the company of their choice or working with a particular choreographer, or when they are given their dream role, or when they complete their 32 fouettes, or when they are bowing to a standing ovation and the moment is so big that tears just stream down their face. It has become a general catch-all phrase. And it has nothing to do with artistry, except that they are dancing.

I guess I just want to pick a fight. I'm crazy like that.

Lisa @ 25! - shows this weekend part 2

Lisa @ 25
Performances were moved to Oct. 9, 10 & 11.
Aliw Theater, Pasay City
Tickets at Ticketworld at 891-9999

Alicia sa Bundok Dilim - Shows this Weekend part 1

Alicia sa Bundok Dilim
Graduation recital of Nicole and Chantal Primero
Friday, October 9, 2009 at 7pm
Abelardo Hall, College of Music
University of the Philippines, Diliman

Relief for Typhoon Ondoy

Hello everyone, I hope you are all well and safe. As you may know, Typhoon Ondoy ravaged parts of Northern Luzon, including a good part of the metro where I live (but not exactly that area, thank goodness). Here are a couple of announcements that I need to make in this light:

Philippine Ballet Theatre postpones Ang Pasaway

Philippine Ballet Theatre postponed their second and third performances of Ang Pasaway. It resumes on October 17 and 18 at 3pm, also at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.


DONATIONS

If anyone reading this would like to help, you can give donations of food, supplies, clothes or your able bodied self at any of these places in this photo that I grabbed from the net:



Sorry about the size of this photo, it apparently shrinks when you save it from the page. But I believe you can see the actual size here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/photo.php?pid=2665497&id=9655949961&ref=mf

The Red Cross Rescue and Relief Operations

The easiest way to make donations from wherever you may be in the Philippines is via mobile phone load. Send RED to 2899 (Globe) and 4483 (SMART). Globe's CEO has announced that there are no charges incurred for all donations made at this time.

FOR THOSE OVERSEAS - taken from Claire Agbayani's page on Facebook

To all you New Yorkers....Ondoy NEW YORK Disaster Relief drop off center @ Pandayan Center, 406 W40th St. Between 9th and 10th Aves. New York, NY 10018 or call 212.564.6057. Please spread the word! – from Bingbing Agbayani

for those in AUSTRALIA: Philippines floods: How you can help http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1100222/Philippines-floods:-How-you-can-help- from Joey Alarilla

Repost from Rico Hizon: To all Pinoys in SINGAPORE, if you would like to help our kababayans impacted by the floods, the drop off point for relief goods is Afreight Cargo, #03-09 Lucky Plaza, Orchard Road. Contact Person: Maureen Schepers 6235-1011, 91117855. Please pass this information to fellow Pinoys and non-Filipinos who would like to help – from Arel Virtusio

To all those living in HONG KONG who would like to help the victims of Typhoon Ondoy, you may deposit donations in cash to HSBC Account No. 808-416564-001 – Ateneo Alumni Association - Hong Kong Chapter. Please text 62957677 the amount and time of deposit. Donations in kind could be deposited at Camille Genuino’s residence – from Marianne Carandang ...

Ah yes, Facebook. Gotta love it.


My friend Luna, who is currently in the US, compiled a more comprehensive list:

Moongirl: Donating to Manila from abroad
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Thank you to everyone who has helped/is helping or even, at the very least, empathizing with our country at the moment. Every little bit helps. When this is over, let's dance. :)

2 features on Asia Dance Channel

I wrote two pieces for Asia Dance Channel: a review of Fitri Setyaningsih's The Colour of Inner Earth, and my impressions of Franz Anton Cramer's lecture, "Dance Criticism in the World and its (possible) Social Functions." Here are excerpts:

Dr. Cramer then discusses "dance history's master narratives," reminding us of the social, political and aesthetic categories in which dance exists. It is here that he differentiates modern from contemporary, after a brief historical look at the phases between and the different movements that came out of Germany, including expressionism, constructivism and Tanz Theater. Then he asks us what is contemporary, and what makes contemporary dance? Given that ‘contemporary’ equals ‘new,’ he posits that a work valued by its "newness" isn't properly assessed, and that the concept of "newness" is "extremely boring," and "cannot be the only criteria" for a dance to be contemporary. In a global setting, the definition is definitely more complicated.

He then talks about how dance is exoticized as West looks at East, giving several examples of exoticized colonies, including the 1931 French exposition and French archive of international dance, and books published within the same decade looking at folk dance practice in South East Asian countries. It would seem that Dr. Cramer is perhaps reminding us of instances where European and Asian relationships can go awry, which is interesting given that the dance summit we were attending was organized by Europeans for the South East Asian region.

from "Possibly Functional in Society: Dance Criticism"
Talk by Franz Anton Cramer
by Joelle Jacinto
Read the rest here

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The dancers are not just androgynous but also ambiguous. We do not know what they are or what they are doing, why they are doing this strange dance of alternating calm and frenzy. As this goes on for quite a while, I was beginning to create stories in my head about who or what they were and thought they fit right in the first Star Wars movie where the stocky desert people walked gracelessly over sand dunes in their bulky cloaks. The stage began to look like a desert then, and the faint pastels on the cyclorama behind them reminded me of the colors of the strange double sunset of the planet that Luke Skywalker had lived the first half of his life.

After what seemed a lifetime of this kind of movement, the ambient music began to get more frenetic, and the dancers began to get more frenetic as well. I don't remember how this started; sometimes, when we wait for something to happen, we unfortunately blink and realize we shouldn't have.

from "Enviable Exchanges in Jakarta
A Review of Fitri Setyaningsih's The Colour of the Inner Earth"
by Joelle Jacinto
Read the rest here

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There are also reviews of Donna Miranda's Beneath Polka-Dotted Skies by Choy Su-Ling and Pichet Klunchun's About Khon by Constanze Klementz, as well as essays and opinion pieces by Su-Ling and Renee Sariwulan in this special Indonesia issue. Go check them out on Asia Dance Channel.

PBT's show - new poster, new title

on blogging and putting yourself out there

I am planning to put up an online version of my magazine, Runthru, very soon; I'm in the process of figuring out what to put in it, what it will look like, why you will still buy the print version even if there's an online version, as well as figuring out what platform to put it on and how I'm going to pay for it. I've been looking for pegs* and of course had to check out Dance Magazine's online version.

They have this section called "Blogs," like online versions of broadsheets and newspapers do (My favorite blog on a broadsheet is Mayo's: http://blogs.todayonline.com/forartssake/). So I was thinking, maybe I should link my blog to Runthru, too. But how different would my blog posts be once I put up Runthru, which I plan will have regular news updates so that it's current and relevant and not necessarily waiting for the print version all the time? Right now, I'm mostly putting up news bits on this blog, basically because I've been busy doing actual writing, among other things. I also haven't been comfortable about what kind of things I want to share on this blog, given that I don't want it to be a "personal" blog anymore. So I've been wondering, is this to personal to share here? Wouldn't people interested in dance in the Philippines be interested to read these things, also?

That's one thing about blogging - it's a public endeavor. Very, very public. I always have personal blogs that anyone can read (on livejournal, I do not lock my posts because I have friends who read my blogs who cannot be bothered to get a livejournal account just to read my locked posts), but I'm always startled and uneasy when somebody comes up to me and mentions that they read my blog. I have to watch what I say. Going from that kind of blogging to wanting to share a blog on the Philippine dance scene is quite a difficult transition. I'm worried that this blog is getting a bit boring; at the same time, I worry about its/my credibility. Such a difficult transition, isn't it?

So, hoping to solve my dilemma, I checked out Dance Magazine EIC's blog to see what she blogs about. It wasn't much help - she casually talks about a Ballet Russes exhibit (which she could have had a full feature on in her magazine), about the death of Merce Cunningham and how that affected her and the artists around her, her thoughts after seeing Pina Bausch's dancers perform after her death, all little editorials that could be bigger articles. Which I guess is what a blog of an editor-in-chief should be about.

I know I'll figure it out eventually. I hope you stick around for the ride.

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*One of my pegs is CritiCine, the independent online film criticism magazine, produced by the late Alexis Tioseco, which is an easily navigable site, whose valuable content matched the site's gorgeousness. Interestingly, when I was going through the site to get ideas, thinking what a brilliant man Alexis Tioseco was and how encouraged I felt that I wanted to do the same for dance, I didn't know yet that he had died - I believe I was looking at the site the day after if not the same day. I believe his work continues even after his death, inspiring a lot of us to take up the good fight and keep fighting. And so I shall. Though I have yet to figure out my attack strategy haha.

La Fille Mal Gardee and Other Ballets - PBT

EDIT: Philippine Ballet Theatre's La Fille Mal Gardee and Other Ballets is a Filipino version. The new poster:






This is the old poster, which I still find somewhat charming, so I'm keeping it. Schedules still apply.




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Fulbright Association Invites Applications For 2009 Selma Jeanne Cohen Fund Lecture On Dance

It's too late for me to join (don't have any research ready), but some of you might be interested. Hurry, though, deadline is the 22nd.

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The Fulbright Association has issued a call for applications to present the 2009 lecture under the Selma Jeanne Cohen Fund for International Scholarship on Dance. Applications must be received by Sept. 22, 2009.

The Selma Jeanne Cohen Fund enables a dance scholar to present a major paper on previously unpublished research at the Fulbright Association’s annual conference. The 2009 lecture will be delivered on Oct. 31 as part of the Fulbright Association 32nd Annual Conference, “Mutual Understanding amid Global Economic Challenges,” in Washington, D.C. The recipient of the Selma Jeanne Cohen Fund award will receive round-trip travel and associated expenses.

The 2009 lecturer will be chosen according to guidelines that were developed with the late Dr. Selma Jeanne Cohen, dance historian and founding editor of the International Encyclopedia of Dance. The competition is open to all dance scholars. Guidelines and application materials are posted at www.fulbright.org/cohenfund.

Alison M Friedman, general manager of Parnassus Productions, Inc., presented the 2008 Selma Jeanne Cohen Lecture in International Dance Scholarship entitled “Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Carving out Space for Chinese Modern Dance in an Interconnected World.”

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A network for dance in the Asia-Pacific region

My piece on the Goethe Institut's regional dance summit got published yesterday on Malaya. An excerpt:

The gathering was composed of dance choreographers and critics from South East Asia, New Zealand and Australia, who came together in the effort of building a network for dance in the region. Binding the summit together was the launch of the Tanz Connexions website, which aims to provide an updated view of the dance scene in the region, and to promote collaborations and further developments of contemporary dance.

There was a lot of buzz about the use of the terms "contemporary" and "traditional" in this summit. The theme of the summit was "Transforming Traditions." I see it as the Goethe Institut’s acknowledgment of Southeast Asia’s strong roots in traditional dance and how, coming from this background, choreographers attempt to explore the contemporary. Margie Medlin, director of Australia’s Critical Path, in her keynote address about the dance scene in her country, said that contemporizing dance meant to "take dance from outside and layer their heritage on top of it," which is normal in multicultural countries, and in post-colonial ones as well.

Of course, our own local dance scene has long dealt with the contemporizing of traditional dance and is looking towards other explorations than merely layering heritage on top of new choreography. Filipino choreographer Donna Miranda, who performed her Beneath Polka-Dotted Skies at the summit, is more interested in multimedia collaborations with other non-dance artists, both in the formation of ideas and in execution.

Read the rest here: http://www.malaya.com.ph/sep02/livi4.htm

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The Wifi Body Festival on Go Magazine

I also manage an online magazine for Globe Telecom, and we have an arts and culture section. I asked Issa to write about the Wifi Body Festival for me and I published it a couple weeks ago.

The Body Evolving, Growing

by Clarissa Cecilia Mijares

Dancers and dance enthusiasts gathered once again to nurture dance and to celebrate the ever-evolving Filipino artistry in movement. The 4th Wi-Fi Body Independent Contemporary Dance Festival was held at the Cultural Center of the Philippines from June 25-July 5. Ambitious and spanning two weeks, the dance festival lived up to its promise of a bigger and all-encompassing festival.

Festival Director Paul Morales together with Angel Lawenko-Baguilat and Honey Brendia –Moraga had been successful in organizing the activities for this year’s Wi-Fi. Workshops, performances and competitions were spread out for the two-week duration of the festival and brought together more than a hundred dancers and other collaborating artists.

Dancers and dance enthusiasts gathered once again to nurture dance and to celebrate the ever-evolving Filipino artistry in movement. The 4th Wi-Fi Body Independent Contemporary Dance Festival was held at the Cultural Center of the Philippines from June 25-July 5. Ambitious and spanning two weeks, the dance festival lived up to its promise of a bigger and all-encompassing festival.

Festival Director Paul Morales together with Angel Lawenko-Baguilat and Honey Brendia –Moraga had been successful in organizing the activities for this year’s Wi-Fi. Workshops, performances and competitions were spread out for the two-week duration of the festival and brought together more than a hundred dancers and other collaborating artists.

Festival Mainstays
Dance companies like Dance Forum, Airdance, Chameleon Dance Theater, and UP Dance Company continue their support for the festival. These companies and other companies performed in IndepenDance and the Gala Shows of the festival.

IndepenDance featured independent dance companies and choreographers. UP Dance Company performed Pedro Kusinero, Filipino adaptation of Petroushka with libretto by Basilio Villaruz and choreography by Elena Laniog and Herbert Alvarez. Airdance staged a show featuring choreographies by Wi-Fi Body Competition winners Ava Villanueva and Rhosam Prudenciado. Japanese dance-artist Maki Morishita also collaborated with Prudenciado while the alumni of Ballet Philippines impressed the audience with the dances featured in IndepenDance and Gala shows. Having wowed the audience last year with their strength and forward-thinking, Dance=Pull led by Dwight Rodrigazo returned this year with even stronger dancers. They shared the stage with Kahayag Community Dance and Theater Company from Koronadal and Agnes Locsin’s Locsin dance Workshop.

Another main component of the contemporary dance festival is the new Choreographers Competition. This year, Ballet Manila’s Gerardo Francisco bested 12 others who vied for the grand prize with his piece “Balikbayan”. The festival organizers and judges decided to add Third place and Best Dancer awards. Zyda Baaya won second place while Johnny Amar placed third. Yasnina Jumalon took home the Best Dancer award equivalent to the previous years’ audience choice award.

The festival's Emerging Talent Showcase featured school-based dance companies and dance schools from all over the Philippines. Watching the younger dancers was refreshing and they showed great promise as the future of Philippine dance.

New Additions
New components were introduced in this years’ festival. Among the additions were 2nd Step, Uncensored Bodies, and the Dancing Body.

The dancing Body is a photo exhibit of dance photos taken by various photographers. Uncensored Bodies dance Film competition is the first of its kind to b e held in the country. Short dance films were submitted by Filipinos and foreigners alike. RR Basco bagged all the awards with his two entries, Siete Dolores and I love, I hate.

Finalists from the previous Wi-Fi Body New choreographers’ competition were given the opportunity to show new works with 2nd Step. With the guidance of Wi-Fi Body Festival’s founding director Ms. Myra Beltran, the young choreographers staged new masterpieces without the pressures of a competition. Video introductions for the choreographies were done by festival director Paul Morales.

Outstanding among the new works was Ea Torrado’s The Leg She Never Had chronicling a relationship between a man and a woman, showing the different hues of romantic love.

Growing Within and Stretching Out
The Wi-Fi Body Festival for this year happened simultaneously with Virgin Labfest. The CCP had a busy two weeks with performances. Even more exciting were the performances in the different spaces within CCP that were not usually used for performances. Restrooms and lounges busted at the seams with people crammed in to watch performances in small corners. Even elevators were spruced up with dance sequences.

Recognizing that contemporary dance has many forms and that almost everyone now is practicing contemporary dance one way or another, the festival opened its arms to the major dance companies of the Philippines. Ballet Philippines, Philippine Ballet Theatre and Ballet Manila sent representative to showcase new works.

Wi-Fi Body Festival had been successful in bringing together the movers, literally and figuratively, of Philippine Dance. The festival has become more than a performance platform for dance-artists, it has become a cause worthy rallying for. Dance artists who join the festival have grown in number throughout the years is testament that not only is festival effective as a venue for performance. It also builds ties and encourages a creation of a dance network, a healthy dance community.

The independent art scene in the Philippines is on the rise. Indie music, indie movies indie theater, and indie dance are developing audiences that are more critical and more discerning of the art that they are consuming. A growing sector, independent artists have inched their way into the mainstream, especially in the case of indie movies. With the audience trekking to the CCP for the two-week Wi-Fi festival it is evident that Independent dance is slowly gaining the recognition it deserves.

Behind the By-line
Clarissa Cecilia Mijares studies anthropology to understand what dance is all about. Until her discovery as the next big star...
Photos courtesy of Carlo Viray Valderrama


Read the actual article here.

Masterworks and meeting Alice Reyes

I saw Ballet Philippines' Masterworks last Saturday and loved that it came together nicely - a BP show I finally was able to fully enjoy after the restaging of La Revolucion Filipina last year. I'm planning to write about it for Runthru, not quite a critique but a documentation of the event and its significance - a homecoming of the company to what it once was, who the company really is.

If I were to critique it, well, I didn't like some of the works that were performed; mainly if you say "Master" works, it should be the best of that particular artistic director (each AD was represented by a work they either choreographed or, as in the case of Cecile Sicangco and Noordin Jumalon, commissioned. I agreed with a lot of the pieces performed, but Romeo and Juliet? Alice Reyes had several more important works that I would love to see today. As I had written about her extensively in my MA thesis, Alice Reyes was the one to almost single-handedly establish dance as an artform in the Philippines, to institutionalize it and to keep it at the level we enjoy today. She promoted creating your own work, using your own style, using Filipino themes. And the piece to represent her is a love pas de deux from a Shakespearean ballet?

So obviously, I'm going to say that the highlight of the evening was actually meeting Alice Reyes in the flesh. I was totally floored. While writing about her in my MA thesis, I only was able to get a portrait of her through written material, as well as interviews with her sisters, Denisa and Edna, and with Steve, who adores her. She has been one of my inspirations in wanting to get a higher degree in dance studies, because she struck it out on her own in Colorado and was one of the first to do so. So, when Denisa said, "This is my sister, Alice," like she wasn't one of the most important personages of all time, I was just caught off guard, staring at her like a teenaged fangirl. I hardly get starstruck these days, and that caught me off guard as well.

At the end of the show, the new BP artistic director called her, Denisa and Edna up to the stage to acknowledge all the important work they've done for the company. While people stood up to applaud her, Alice Reyes simply took the mic and said, "Please come to the next shows. And bring your friends." No poseuring, no basking in the limelight. Just a simple request to keep dance alive.

I am still floored. Did I say I hardly get starstruck these days?


Alice Reyes with Manuel Molina III in her Amada

2 pictures from Tanz Treffen, thank you phone cam

The dance critics from South East Asia + Franz Anton Cramer, my favorite German dance critic



The rest of the Philippine contingent: Donna Miranda and Goethe Manila's Sebastian Griese, walking with me towards the GoetheHaus

Click on photos for larger sizes. Thanks!
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blog revival '09

The Goethe Institut organized a Regional Dance Summit for Contemporary Dance choreographers and dance critics from August 5 to 8, 2009 at the GoetheHaus, Jakarta, Indonesia. The summit brought together over 40 participants from ten different countries, including Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, of course Germany and the Philippines. For the Philippines, Donna Miranda presented her work, Beneath Polka-Dotted Skies, while I was the country's representative dance critic.

Part of the idea of the summit was networking and as I met up with a lot of critics and journalists from other countries, it became clear to me how important the online component of our writings were. Luckily for me, Malaya publishes my work on their website and they're online for at least a year; other critics either write for websites without online components or the paper they write for charges for their online readership. But it does make sense that I should have a blog for dance.

I've already been toying with the idea of a blog that's open to the public, really about my thoughts about dance that other people might enjoy and get something out of. Most of my previous blogs were private, personal blogs and while there were some important dance stuff in it, there was also a lot of stuff that I only wrote for myself. So, in the interest of sharing thoughts of dance with the general public, welcome to this dance blog.

Thinking of a new name for this blog (because the old name was very personal; yet again everything is always about me), I remembered something Donna said to me on another blog - a "magazine blog" I started years ago with a bunch of friends that we couldn't sustain because everyone was busy with their own thing. I had put up my initial thoughts on her piece, Summer Begins and Ends as You Wish in that blog, and she left me a comment which ended with, "Mabuhay ang Blog!" This is because dance writing was very sparse - it stil is - and blogs were so cool because they were an alternate means of getting the news out on dance and art to a wide audience. Spending this week with her, I am reminded of that comment of hers, our first actual exchange and thought, how apt!

And so, mabuhay!
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