it's been a while

Spent the day rehearsing for Pasinaya 2010 tomorrow: TEAM Dance Studio's slot is at 12:40pm at the CCP Rehearsal Hall, if you're interested. Anyway, it's been a while since I've felt this way - post dancing ache all over my body, but happy euphoric feeling all around. I'm not sure I was able to "feel" this after rehearsals for my school's annual recital, held last December; or perhaps I've not been dancing too often recently to remember how this feels. I know I used to feel it on a regular basis, back when I was dancing full-time around 5 years ago.

I really like what we're performing tomorrow: Rhapsody in Blue, choreography by Eli Jacinto (my father) to music by George Gershwin. The piece is a tribute to our school, as we're celebrating 30 years of existence this year and my dad got a wee bit sentimental. It's a fusion of jazz, ballet and modern styles, and he copy-pastes signature moves from his older choreographies, but to accentuate that this is who the company is, this is what the company dances. I was catching glimpses of it from the mirror (of course, the CCP Rehearsal Hall has a mirror) while we were doing our run through and regularly kept saying, "Wow!" Hilarious.

I think my dad is very underrated as a choreographer in the Philippines, mainly because he doesn't like to put himself out there as much as other choreographers do. He won a venue grant at the CCP in 1991 and was often invited to feature his works there, but he did/does not offer himself to other groups, nor actively look for venues for his choreography outside of our annual recitals. I suppose he felt that he didn't need to prove himself to anyone, and he can be quite the antisocial grump; something I've always felt I took after.

He actually, these days, feels that he's retired from it all - meaning from the networking, the politics, the winning favor parts, etc. Retirement is staying home all week, doing mini-carpentry projects, and spending the weekend teaching and choreographing at our school. The dance personages I happen to see while at "work," often ask about him, what is he doing these days, etc. They also sincerely ask me to give him their regards. I love this - although he's not written up in history books as a major, influential choreographer (hehe, which is another, much more intriguing story), he has the respect of many important people.

I don't go around telling people that a choreography he's done (and that I'm dancing in, to boot) is fabulous, because, yeah, that would be too weird and full of myself. But if I can be honest here, I think he's one of the best Filipino choreographers of all time. I don't love ALL his works (I have yet to meet a choreographer who's not done bombs), but he's up there in my list, and no it's not because he's my dad. And this is how cool he is: he doesn't want me to write about him. He says, he doesn't need it. These are exactly the guys we should write about more.

At the risk of sounding weird and full of myself, Rhapsody in Blue is beautiful. What's more, it's a delight to dance. You can tell I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

Hope to see you guys there. If you can make it, do say hi.

"Wait, what's the step again?"