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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