The title means Filipino Dance! I'm going to share with you the last
three times I performed traditional Filipino dances.
1) The Filipino community in Abuja is HUGE. Every year, we celebrate the Philippine Independence Day either at the Embassy or at the Sheraton. There's always a program - songs & dances, and I joined them for the first time in 2013. I was part of the La Jota dance (it's with a partner, and we have to clack bamboo castanets with our fingers). This was my first time seeing this dance. There were so many other performances - latik (men hitting coconuts on their shoudlers & knees); a flower dance (bulaklakan), a hat dance (subli), a candle dance (pandanggo sa ilaw), a royalty bamboo dance (singkil), and in the end...hiphop!
So many Filipinos were involved! See the bamboo huts behind us? A couple of Filipinos put these together. They were placed on stage, and while they made the stage look beautiful and local, they served as our changing room!
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| costume practice - this was the hiphop dance in the end. We danced to Laki sa layaw (jeproks) with sunglasses! It was an absolute fun way to end the show |
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| our elegant La Jota dance |
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| After the show, our amazing choreographer (Tita Grace - on the right) organized a party for all the performers. We received certificates from our Ambassador, and danced the night away! |
*You can find the video of our whole performance in two parts on youtube.
2) The next time I got to perform was exactly one year later, in Sheffield. A few weeks after I arrived in Sheffield, Typhoon Haiyan happened. An email was sent out to all the Filipinos in the university, asking if we'd like to meet each other. There were 8 of us who met that night, but over the next few days we started meeting other Filipinos. We also established ourselves as a formal 'student society' in the University. We did lots of activities together (eg. fund raising, culture awareness) but most of all, we had lots of fun (going to restaurants, watching movies, cooking in each other's homes). One of my best memories with this group was our performance at the university's International Cultural Evening. We had less than two months to prepare. A lot of us didn't think we could pull it off - we didn't have costumes, props. Nothing. But a few of us were really determined. I'd like to say I spearheaded the whole project, but in the end it was absolute team work! The members who didn't want to dance met with us to create the props (eg. make paper flower torches) and also hit the bamboo for the tinikling dance.
This was the first time Filipinos ever participated in the schools' annual cultural shows, so we knew that everyone had see THE tinikling. Michelle and I choreographed the dance, for three girls with a male partner each. The other dance was Igorot-ish. It was all a big laugh actually - we wanted the boys to wear nothing but "bahags" to show the audience our tribal/indigenous side.
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| We ordered bamboo sticks off the internet. We were really shocked and unhappy to see tha they were smaller than the description on the website. Definitely not the right size of bamboo for tinikling. And yes, we took turns carrying the bamboos from venue to venue for practices. |
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| We practised in really tiny spaces - in each other's dorms; in the university's library and students union building. Oh but we had so much fun each time! |
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| John and I edited the music. He prepared the first part and I prepared the second half, and then we put them together. |
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| Example of how much fun we had (sorry, not sorry for posting this John! :P) |
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| colorful tinikling |
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| We ended our performances with a few seconds of free-styling to Black Eyed Peas "Bebot" |
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| That's all of us! |
And here's a video of our performance that night!! CLICK HERE
3) Just a few days after I arrived in Abuja this year, some friends from the Philippine Embassy told me to join the upcoming show. We were much fewer in number than that of 2013 (and I also learnt that they hadn't had a show in the last two years)... but we managed to pull off four dances. I was in three of them - the bench dance (sayaw sa bangko), the malong dance (with a tube skirt) and the hand fan dance (wrong name! well, it's called Singkil. bamboo involved too). We had a really simple show - no background props...but the dances were really new (not just to me, but to the audience).
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| Every Sunday morning we practiced on our rooftop. *I injured my knee during our last bench dance practice. On the night of the show I wasn't able to jump up and down the bench as we were supposed to. Video link HERE (team blue!) |
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| Singkil. Video link HERE |
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| the hardest part of the dance was ace-ing this flower/circle! We did it!! |
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| In the beginning, I felt this malong dance was really boring, but once I watched the video of us, and the way we were perfectly synchronised, I found it to be extremely elegant! Video link HERE |