forthcoming
The State of Philippine Dance: A solo in 10 parts, as the title suggests, is a research and performance work depicting the current state or unstate of Philippine dance through a full length solo work featuring the choreographies of 10 of the country’s most visible voices in Philippine Dance. It is a cartographic and bodily index of the varied dance practices that are currently being presented and pursued in the Philippines. This choreography project is a critical proposal to establish a community of seemingly varied dance practices held together by a common geopolitical position, precarious identity and contested historical contexts.
Ten Filipino choreographers, from different generations, regional and aesthetic affiliations will be invited to take part in the work. Each one will be asked to choreograph a 3-5 minute solo, which will then be assembled and performed into one full-length solo piece. Underscoring the intangible and ephemeral nature of dance, the project is as much a performance work, a practice in building communities as it is an archival work. As its primary objective, the work is intended to be critical reference – a living index – on Philippine dance for the use of both international and local dance communities.
background
To date, no comprehensive survey chronicling influential movements in Philippine dance has ever been done nor attempted much less given be a central theme in a performance work in the Philippines. The last encyclopedic work in Philippine dance was a six-volume inventory of folk and social dances that National Artist For Dance Francisca Reyes-Aquino compiled in the 1940s – a monumental ethnographic work commissioned by the then Bureau of Education to become the fundamental material in educating young Filipinos of their heritage and identity and still used as mandatory text in physical education classes across the country. And yet this work has never received the critical attention or aesthetic consideration it deserves, even unfairly relegated to nothing but “physical education” and not art.
When Francisca Reyes-Aquino, National Artist for Dance, embarked on the humble task of creating a comprehensive inventory of Philippine dance, little did she know that after more than fifty years, her work remains as the single most important written work in and of dance in the Philippines. Reyes-Aquino gave to the Philippines, by way of dance and a regimen of physical instruction, a body that is to be identified as Filipino. Her brave titles -- containing nothing more than simple textual notations of local folk dances by varied ethnic communities living in the Philippines believed to be in danger of extinction -- are testaments not only of the diverse culture of the nation that has come be The Philippines but also hints at a penchant to protect that which is in danger of being lost. A loss that is not only a threat to culture, with the advent of modernization and sprawling urbanization, but more specifically the loss that is an ever-present threat to dance -- dance being the field most vulnerable to the threat of disappearance.
This project takes inspiration from the Reyes-Aquino’s work and heritage. Upholding the quality and kind of choreographic practice that she has, through her published works, laid down for current dance makers. What we can learn from Reyes-Aquino is an aspect of the choreographic so rarely articulated, if not totally taken for granted even by dance practitioners. That is, more than a field invested on the innovation of movement or development of unique gestural expressions of the body, choreography is also most importantly a means of building and cementing a community. Nowhere is this more apparent than in how she has managed to “educate” Filipino bodies of their cultural heritage and identity through her volumes of Philippine Dances, solidifying an imagined community of Filipinos bound by common traits of bodily expression. And is it not the institutionalization of her work into the county’s educational curriculum an indication that she has achieved what every choreographer aspires to? That is to have one’s work outlive oneself? As dance critic and scholar Gerald Siegmund would put it, it is “when the choreographer is absent that the choreography starts to work.”
This foregrounds the most crucial aspect of dance -- one that has been (perhaps even way too) many times pointed out as reason why dance is lagging behind all the other fields of art, for instance visual arts or literature, in terms of developing its discourse – it’s ephemerality, it's immateriality or the perception that it is “beyond language.” And this is where the field of choreography stakes its importance as a field that steps in to ‘save ‘dance from that moment of crisis or from being completely lost. For is it not only when movement is organized and set into choreography does it undermine its own loss? Is it not then that the function of a choreography or a choreographer not to create a community for dancers facing the crisis of loss?
methodology
This solo work will be comprised of 10 parts, each part corresponding to a particular choreographer’s work. Ten Filipino choreographers will be invited to take part in this project, each of who will be tasked to choreograph one part – a 3-5-minute solo material. All these solos will then be performed as a full-length solo piece entitled “The State of Philippine Dance: A solo in 10 parts.” In doing so it hopes that meaningful engagement with current crop of influential Filipino choreographers and/or dance makers through intimate artistic collaboration, exchange, one-on-one dialog and community consultations shall be achieved. Alongside this, it also hopes that this endeavor will contribute to increasing the profile and visibility of these Filipino choreographers.
* The State of Philippine Dance has received funding from the National Commission for Culture and Arts and set to be staged by 2014. Watch out for details and list of collaborators in December 2013.
To date, no comprehensive survey chronicling influential movements in Philippine dance has ever been done nor attempted much less given be a central theme in a performance work in the Philippines. The last encyclopedic work in Philippine dance was a six-volume inventory of folk and social dances that National Artist For Dance Francisca Reyes-Aquino compiled in the 1940s – a monumental ethnographic work commissioned by the then Bureau of Education to become the fundamental material in educating young Filipinos of their heritage and identity and still used as mandatory text in physical education classes across the country. And yet this work has never received the critical attention or aesthetic consideration it deserves, even unfairly relegated to nothing but “physical education” and not art.
When Francisca Reyes-Aquino, National Artist for Dance, embarked on the humble task of creating a comprehensive inventory of Philippine dance, little did she know that after more than fifty years, her work remains as the single most important written work in and of dance in the Philippines. Reyes-Aquino gave to the Philippines, by way of dance and a regimen of physical instruction, a body that is to be identified as Filipino. Her brave titles -- containing nothing more than simple textual notations of local folk dances by varied ethnic communities living in the Philippines believed to be in danger of extinction -- are testaments not only of the diverse culture of the nation that has come be The Philippines but also hints at a penchant to protect that which is in danger of being lost. A loss that is not only a threat to culture, with the advent of modernization and sprawling urbanization, but more specifically the loss that is an ever-present threat to dance -- dance being the field most vulnerable to the threat of disappearance.
This project takes inspiration from the Reyes-Aquino’s work and heritage. Upholding the quality and kind of choreographic practice that she has, through her published works, laid down for current dance makers. What we can learn from Reyes-Aquino is an aspect of the choreographic so rarely articulated, if not totally taken for granted even by dance practitioners. That is, more than a field invested on the innovation of movement or development of unique gestural expressions of the body, choreography is also most importantly a means of building and cementing a community. Nowhere is this more apparent than in how she has managed to “educate” Filipino bodies of their cultural heritage and identity through her volumes of Philippine Dances, solidifying an imagined community of Filipinos bound by common traits of bodily expression. And is it not the institutionalization of her work into the county’s educational curriculum an indication that she has achieved what every choreographer aspires to? That is to have one’s work outlive oneself? As dance critic and scholar Gerald Siegmund would put it, it is “when the choreographer is absent that the choreography starts to work.”
This foregrounds the most crucial aspect of dance -- one that has been (perhaps even way too) many times pointed out as reason why dance is lagging behind all the other fields of art, for instance visual arts or literature, in terms of developing its discourse – it’s ephemerality, it's immateriality or the perception that it is “beyond language.” And this is where the field of choreography stakes its importance as a field that steps in to ‘save ‘dance from that moment of crisis or from being completely lost. For is it not only when movement is organized and set into choreography does it undermine its own loss? Is it not then that the function of a choreography or a choreographer not to create a community for dancers facing the crisis of loss?
methodology
This solo work will be comprised of 10 parts, each part corresponding to a particular choreographer’s work. Ten Filipino choreographers will be invited to take part in this project, each of who will be tasked to choreograph one part – a 3-5-minute solo material. All these solos will then be performed as a full-length solo piece entitled “The State of Philippine Dance: A solo in 10 parts.” In doing so it hopes that meaningful engagement with current crop of influential Filipino choreographers and/or dance makers through intimate artistic collaboration, exchange, one-on-one dialog and community consultations shall be achieved. Alongside this, it also hopes that this endeavor will contribute to increasing the profile and visibility of these Filipino choreographers.
* The State of Philippine Dance has received funding from the National Commission for Culture and Arts and set to be staged by 2014. Watch out for details and list of collaborators in December 2013.
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