Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
I've been guilty of this. But no longer. Starting this semester, I've been telling my students to buy the original copies of books I'm requiring them to read. Absolutely no photocopies. Because I think, as teachers, we have somehow helped create a culture of disregard for books and reading by allowing our students to photocopy pages upon pages of text, with utter disregard for copyright and the authors' bottomline. It has also reduced written works produced with so much sweat and blood and research to the level of the cheap and disposable. No wonder there is a diminished regard for the writing profession in general to the level of the impractical. No wonder people keep going up to me, always asking for free copies of my book, as if they can do the same with an engineer, or a doctor, or a lawyer. Living in a third world country is no excuse. So yes books can be expensive sometimes. But that's paying premium for knowledge gained and a sense of literature found. You're already paying almost P400 a month to cable television that gives you nothing but the WoWoWee kind of stupidity. Why can't you do the same to something that can actually make you think and ponder and learn?
1:03 AM |
Lucy Patrimonio Jumawan-Sauer: A Lifetime in Dance
For more than five decades, Mrs. Lucy Patromonio Jumawan Sauer has been an innovator and catalyst for dance development in both the Philippines and Australia. “I hope that someday, people will understand where I am coming from,” she has said. “That dance is very important because it comes from the soul, and that there is a division between performance and entertainment. It’s nice to do the traditional. If you are learned, trained, and you have the ability to incorporate, then do it. There is no limitation. Through time, you find your skill and you become wiser and always aspire for a higher standard.”
Mrs. Sauer was a student of Silliman University, a graduate of its grade school and high school. She discovered an affinity for dance at an early age. By the time she was 17, she had already established her own dance studio—the Lucy Patrimonio Dance School. She studied classical ballet with the Anita Kane School in Manila from 1954-1957, and soon she was making her graceful way to the heart of the country’s dance scene. She grabbed the sought-after role as a soloist dancer in Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, dancing with Alexandra Danilova, then one of only four of the world’s most renowned prima ballerinas, at the Araneta Coliseum in 1957.
Later, she honed her classical ballet with Margaret Craske at Jacobs Pillow Dance University in Lee, Massachussetts from 1968-1969, where she also studied mime and movement, stage craft, and dance composition. She later studied modern dance with Norman Walker in New York, and between 1972 and 1974, she took up contemporary dance and jazz at the Bodenweiser Dance Center in New South Wales in Australia.
Back in 1959, she was director and choreographer of the Foundation University Dance Company. She also soon became the founder and directress of the Dance Department of the School of Music at Silliman University, where she worked from 1962 to 1972, and founded the group that is now known as the Kahayag Dance Troupe. A Ford Foundation scholarship in 1962 gave her an opportunity to do research on the tribal dances of Datu Tangkilan, the Royal Sultan of Zamboanga del Norte. She focused on the unseen dance traditions of the Suban-on Muslims in Mindanao, with special permission from the Datu. She collaborated on the project with other Sillimanian dance and music luminaries such as Bobbie Vista, Albert Faurot, Miriam Palmore, and Zoe Lopez. This enabled Mrs. Sauer to discover other forms of dances, which she later incorporated in her teachings. One distinguishing mark of her career as a dance teacher is that most of her outstanding ballet students soon became members and soloists of the Philippine Bayanihan Dance Company.
In 1972, she was guest performer of the Philippine House Consulate at Canberra in honor of Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. That year, she was choreographer and director of the Philippine Dance Performance in the First Folkloric Festival at the Sydney Opera House. In 1976, then First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos presented the Department, under her directorship, a plaque of appreciation for its involvement in pioneering classical ballet in the Visayas and all over the Philippines.
When she soon moved to Australia, she involved herself in various socio-cultural projects, appearing as guest for a variety of TV shows in Sydney and in New Zealand. She became a teacher for Black Theater in Red Fern, New South Wales, and for the Sydney Dance Concert Group and the Bodenweiser Dance Center. She became actively involved with Australia’s Aboriginal people because of her love for Aboriginal arts and ethnic dances. She considered herself an “Aboriginal woman,” and worked closely with aboriginal elders to record their dance traditions. For thirty years, the aboriginal people gave her permission to come to their sacred places prohibited to the rest of the world. As part of her study of Aboriginal dances, she was allowed to go to Mornington Island, a very remote part of Australia where there is no talking, only strong eye contact.
In 1977, she was choreographer for Australia’s participation in the World Indigenous Dance Festival in Nigeria. In 1979, she was artistic director of the Aboriginal participation by the National Aboriginal and Islander Dance Theater in the International Dance Festival in Africa. She was featured in 1979 as the Migrant of the Year in a documentary presented on SBS Televison. She is also the founding director of Bodenweiser Dance Center’s Dances of Asia, the Philippine Arts and Cultural Society of Australia, and the Cultural Arts International and Association of Asian Artists of Australia. She is the managing director of the Contemporary Dance Association in Umina Beach, New South Wales. Throughout her years of influencing people with her art, one of the various recognitions she received was being selected as one of the Great Women of the 21st Century by the American Biographical Institute.
Mrs. Sauer believes that her education at Silliman has instilled in her a form of discipline, which she considers as “the rock that knocked off the stumbling blocks in my professional life.” From the words of Manny Diel in his “Who’s Who?” column, Mrs. Sauer, indeed, is an “icon of the Philippine performing arts—very intelligent, highly spiritual, and an inspiring woman that Filipinos should be proud of.” (Jeahan Virda De Barras with Ian Rosales Casocot)
Crossroads in one's life often force us to take stock of the things around us. Tomorrow, I leave Dumaguete for a long-sojourn in a foreign place. I know I will be back very soon -- time flies, after all -- but already the immediate future seems to me to be all a merry mix of sweet uncertainty, unmapped adventures, and possible turning points that can lead me to a different path altogether. I don't know. And yet, that unknowingness feels all right.
So now, in the spirit of turning points, I look back at everything in my life until this moment, and I see with a kind of clarity -- perhaps you can call that maturity? wisdom by way of hard experience? -- the many instances of utter confusion and exquisite heartaches that dot my past. As these things had unfolded then, they had held no sense, no reason. They begat only questions, recriminations. I clearly had no patience. Because now, I see them suddenly as key moments -- vital and necessary the way the heart violently throbs and pumps blood to keep us all alive -- that would in fact lead to something better, or at least hopeful, in time. I guess it is only too human of us to never really be able to recognize the future that began, as a seed, shrouded in pain and being lost.
There is a reason why God has given me this and that, and all in His time. I will not question it. I will just hurl myself into the graciousness that is His plan and delight, when he can, in the revelations.
I quickly realize that for the most part we are really clueless with many things in life. This is especially true with things we frankly have no emotional connection with. We cannot know everything. But with some things, we are like sniffing dogs, our senses acute to things not readily perceptible. We are all idiot savants that way. We have trained our hearts to seek out the tiny ebbs and flows of things we love. And having said that, I must say this: yes, dear, I know. I was listening to that conversation that night when the universe turned on one particular topic. And, without meaning to, I could tell what you were not telling anyone. I could tell it by just the slight change in your voice, the slightest urgency for deflection by your words, and by your impassive face that tried to say nothing but betrayed everything.
For a moment, everything came to a stand still for me.
Do you know the funny thing about the heart breaking? It does so without thunder and lightning. It just wilts.
11:47 AM |
Cherie Gil Brings Maria Callas to the Luce Stage in Master Class
The Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee and the Philippine Opera Company, in cooperation with Globe and Midtown Printing Company, are proud to present the Tony Award-winning play, Master Class, about the legendary opera diva Maria Callas. It will have its Visayan premiere and Dumaguete run on 20 and 21 August 2010, Friday and Saturday, at 8 P.M., Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium in Silliman University.
Terrence McNally’s play was first produced by the Philadelphia Theatre Company in March 1995; it opened at the Golden Theatre in New York City in November of the same year. The play is based on a series of master classes given by the renowned opera singer Maria Callas at the Juilliard School of Music in New York in 1971 and 1972. Callas (1923–77), was the greatest dramatic soprano of her generation and also a controversial figure. Her restless and tempestuous personality often led her into disputes with opera managements and feuds with rival singers. However, she was adored by her fans and was the subject of constant media attention, including gossip about her jet-set life with the wealthy Greek shipowner Aristotle Onassis.
Although Master Class does delve into the triumphs and tragedies of Callas’s life, its primary focus is the art of dramatic singing. As McNally’s fictional version of Callas teaches her class, she explains to her students, two sopranos and a tenor, just what it takes to invest the music with real feeling, revealing as she does so how demanding the profession of opera singing is. She also reveals her own contradictory personality—proud and egotistical yet also vulnerable and self-pitying. In spite of all the flaws of its main character, however, Master Class, written by a man who has been a Callas fan since he was a teenager in high school, is a tribute to the dedication of a great singer and actress to her chosen art.
Although the play touches on many of the main events of Maria Callas’ life, it is not in essence a biographical portrait. Rather, it is an exploration of the nature of artistic creation, as applied to operatic singing and acting. Maria makes clear that art is serious business that cannot be done by half measures; it demands total commitment on the part of the singer/actress. Being an opera singer can never be an easy career; the singer must give everything to the demands of her craft. This means intense discipline over a lifetime.
Witness one of Philippine cinema’s living legends Cherie Gil in a very rare performance as the opera icon Maria Callas.
Playing the students in her master class are Juan Alberto Gaerlan as Anthony Candolino, Florence Aguilar as Sophie de Palma, Ana Feleo as Sharon Graham, Francis Amora as the pianist Manny.
Juan Alberto Gaerlan completed his Professional Diploma Studies in Western Opera at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts where he graduated with distinction. He has made numerous performances here and abroad and was last seen as Rodolfo in POC’s and CCP’s production of Giacomo Puccini’s La Boheme.
Ana Guillen Feleo is an Aliw Awardee for Best Actress in a Musical for 2007. She received her music education at the College of Music, University of the Philippines under the tutelage of Professor Emeritus Fides Cuyugan- Asensio. She pursued further coaching with W. Stephen Smith in Juilliard last 2008 when she prepared for her biggest break in her operatic career when she played the role of Musetta in La Boheme.
Florence Aguilar graduated magna cum laude in voice from the University of Santo Tomas Conservatory of Music. She was part of the Singapore Lyric Opera’s twin bill production of Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci and of the Philharmonic Chamber of Choir of Singapore’s Bach’s Mass in B minor and I Love My Love concerts conducted by Maestro Lim Lau and Johannes Prinz respectively.
Francis Amora is a BM graduate in Piano Performance from Philippine Women’s University Conservatory of Music and is currently taking up his Masters in Piano Performance in UST Conservatory of Muic under Prof. Raul Sunico.
The play is directed by veteran stage actor Michael Williams.
Tickets are available at P300, P500, P800, and P1000. For inquiries, please call (035) 422-6002 loc. 520 or loc. 250, or 09173235953.
10:02 PM |
Manila's Best Improv Comedy Troupe to Hit Dumaguete
Silly People’s Improv Theater or SPIT, the premiere improvisational theater group in the Philippines, is set to conquer Dumaguete City on 15 August 2010 in an unscripted comedy showcase titled “SPIT Live in Dumaguete!” as part of the cultural season of the Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee.
SPIT was founded in 2002 by entertainer Gabe Mercado and a group of friends after Mr. Mercado trained with legendary Second City founder Paul Sills, the acknowledged Father of Modern Improv, at the Wisconsin Theater Games Center. In 2004, SPIT spearheaded Spontaneous Combustion: The First Philippine Improv Festival at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and then participated in the 3rd National Theater Festival where they premiered Sarskwela: Ang Sarswelang Kwela, a completely improvised twist on the traditional Filipino sarswela.
In 2009, they premiered two works at the CCP, including Cambiar!, an improvised educational environment themed show for the Earth Day Celebration, and Dingdong! Death is at the Door, an improvised long-form murder-mystery show for the 5th Virgin Labfest. SPIT also represented the Philippines in the prestigious Los Angeles Comedy Festival in Los Angeles in 2004.
Composed of thespians, teachers, and other professionals from varied fields, the group also does regular shows to packed audiences in some of the best entertainment spots throughout Manila and is a staple of corporate functions with their lap smart yet hilarious brand of comedy.With close to five hundred performances to date, SPIT has delighted local and international audiences with their unscripted unrehearsed and totally spontaneous shows.
The show is a co-production of Little Boy Productions. Tickets are available at P200 and P300 for both the matinee and gala shows. For inquiries, please call (035) 422-6002 loc. 520 or loc. 250, or 09173235953.
4:52 AM |
Float Like a Feather in a Beautiful World
I must learn to hold this thought, this memory of a Saturday night, sheathed as it was in the subtlest of pain. But what a word. I hesitate to call it "pain." Perhaps it was just selfishness, perhaps not. But it was the first full weekend of August, my birthday month, and I had felt so utterly abandoned.
The day had gone well, much to my surprise. But it was the night itself that made me teeter on some form of grieving, as if I had lost things, as if I had nothing to begin with and I was merely fooling myself. Was it that I watched a movie alone? Fine. I had planned it that way anyway. But later on, to text friends and to have no one answer back ... It felt ridiculous. As if I had become an interloper, an unwanted speck in the wind, synonymous with the void, and everybody else had lives of their own shielded from all my wants.
I went to a jazz concert later that night but could not get in. They had, so they said, no change for the bill I was waving to their face. I stood there for a long time in the entrance, unsure suddenly of what to do, where to go. A few feet away, the music was already wafting like some strange invitation -- and yet there I was, unable to get in.
And then of course I would see him there. Right near the entrance. Like some ghost. He was tall, he was easily seen. I thought, So he has arrived home finally from that place in Indochina. His sister beside him said hello like the twinkling universe. He didn't. He stood there like stone, and afterwards when he passed by me to seek something outside, it was as if I were the invisible air.
Was this how it was supposed to turn out? The nuances of an eight-month love affair's end turned to silence and unseeing?
It was more than I could take. I raced home. Yet I did not want to be home. I grabbed a book -- Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty -- and raced to a downtown restaurant, which was sure to be open for the rest of the night. I did not want to be alone, even if it meant being in the middle of complete strangers. When midnight came, only a scattering of us were left to the devices of our little worlds: some studied, I pretended to read. I felt myself drifting, floating.
And I thought, so suddenly, that it was some strange comfort to know that by the end of this month, I shall be somewhere else far away from this place, where people I know would not see me. It was the only kind of invisibility I craved.
I don't belong here. Not home. Not home when the sight of it bleeds the heart, and all that one has left is the aching breathing that stands for whatever remains of whatever life this is supposed to be.
It’s August. It’s the beginning of another season for writers and writerly fests. And a few days from now, parcels—traditionally via LBC—from a certain office in Fort Bonifacio in Taguig City will make their way to certain households in the country, and make their recipients, especially the first-timers, glow with unalloyed joy. Their joy will culminate in a certain ceremony on September 1 in the ballroom of a posh Makati hotel. It will be a grand night for many of them.
I envy those people that first brush with that kind of news they will be receiving.
But first, I must admit that this essay was occasioned by a simple question asked of me in Formspring, a social networking site where people who “follow” you get to ask you questions ranging from the silly to the profound to the thought-provoking.
What was your favorite birthday gift ever? a friend wanted to know. It made me think, but oh so briefly.
Because my response was immediate, which was both surprising and unsurprising—the former for the solid conviction I unknowingly had of the matter, and the latter for the context from which that conviction came from. And yet, that “birthday gift” came to me not even as a direct consequence of natal day traditions. And it came from no one in particular.
It was my first Palanca. The “gift” was the notification of my win from the Foundation. And the year was 2002.
I was depressed in 2002, in a cycle that would become familiar, given the temperament that I have, usually arising from some deep dance with artistic impulses. I had graduated from college in 1999, and I was stuck in some shitty job and was now making a transition from the world of journalism to that Graduate School and part-time teaching. I was doing something I honestly told friends I would never, ever do. In 2002, I found myself living again with my mother in our old house because I couldn’t even afford my own rent. I had no love life to speak of, and I didn’t really know what to do with the “writer” thing. It all seemed hopeless.
And to top it all off, somebody gave me the gossipy goods that a bunch of literary “friends” in campus were laughing behind my back because they never thought much of me as a writer. “Ian, a writer?” one of them was reported to have pondered the question. And that he answered his own musings by laughing so hard. That hurt, but I made that slur my impetus to write a story titled “Old Movies.” I wanted to try to submit it to the Palancas, just to see if my “friends” were indeed right. If I don’t win, I told myself, I’d stop writing for real.
I was lying in bed that whole morning one day in August—that season for writing awards. I didn’t want to get up. I thought I was the biggest loser in the world. I was turning 27 in a few days, and I felt old.
Then my mother came into my old bedroom. “You have something from LBC,” she said.
Who would send me a package? I thought as she handed the sealed envelope to me. It looked official. Then I saw the words “Carlos Palanca Foundation.” My hands began trembling. I quickly opened the envelope, and took out the letter.
I gave the loudest whoop ever in my entire life.
I still remember that overwhelming feeling of joy washing over me. It was the sweetest feeling in the world. It still remains one of the deepest, most satisfactory thing in my life.
This is why I don’t think highly of people (especially those who have never won the Palanca) who say with such conceited sincerity that it is all a lottery, a game of chance, a matter of knowing who the judges are.
Tell that to the 27-year-old guy who was depressed and was down on his luck, and who was despairing if anything would ever become of his writing. It meant something. It meant I could continue.
[3] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
In her radio show, Dr. Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance.
The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, written by a U.S. man, and posted on the Internet. It's funny, as well as informative:
Dear Dr. Laura:
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination ... End of debate.
I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of Menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15: 19-24). The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination, Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there "degrees" of abomination?
7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev. 24:10-16). Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I'm confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
Your adoring fan.
James M. Kauffman, Ed.D. Professor Emeritus, Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education University of Virginia
P.S.
It would be a damn shame if we couldn't own a Canadian.
I don’t remember the last time I have felt this kind of sadness for this x number of days. It has been bothering me lately, because [1] none of the usual tricks are working, and [2] there seems to be no definite reason why I should go around my days masked in a frown.
I lie.
I do know why I’m sad. And it infuriates me that something so unworthy, so despicably insignificant could be the reason for this melancholy.
I lie again.
It is something worthy. And I should just stop lying that a thing could be so powerful it could move the very geography of my mental state. It causes utter madness, and I find myself perched on the precipice of so much want, of so much despair, and find that there is an urge to jump into that welcoming black hollow. How could a thing consume this much?
There goes another lie.
It is not a thing. It is a face. A beautiful face. And in my dreams, it is next to me. It sees only me, and gazes with the bright observation of a beloved. But dreams are not real. Reality is harsh and sharp like shards of exploded glass, and scrapes its jagged edges on my skin, writing in the ink of my own blood its fierce judgment of how broken I am, and how accepting I am of that shattered state.
I last saw her when I was a kid—pushing Grade Six, she quickly reminded me in that birdlike voice that suddenly seemed so very familiar. I guess that’s the way memory works—all of our past lies like a wide and sleeping country, submerged in all our every day forgetfulness, but tingles now and then to the right impulses. The woman named Bathsheba did not look the same—where was the slight young woman whom I used to call Tita Batch, who once took me to Siquijor on a whim, when I was still a wee little boy, which was my first introduction to that mystical place? Her tinkling voice brought me back.
It was what greeted me when she opened the door to her hotel room, in that glorified hospital that marks the southern tip that is the Boulevard. “Is this you? But you’re not a little boy anymore!” she said. I think I must have replied, with a smile: “Sorry, but I couldn’t stop growing up. No one could.”
My mother had brought me here, to this hotel, after endless text messages that day, asking me that my Tita Batch was asking for me. “Do you remember her?” she asked.
"Of course I remember her,” I said. “I still remember Siquijor.” My mind was suddenly running—there were quick slivers of thoughts that contained golden sunsets, a motorcycle ride around the island, an encounter with a strange nocturnal insect that gave me rashes for my remaining days in that island. But Bathsheba had apparently forgotten all of that, I quickly realized. “I brought you to Siquijor?” was what she said, disbelieving, her voice still tinkling in that familiar way. “I don’t remember that.”
It didn’t matter. I have long since accepted the fact that all of us accommodate our memories to a set of definite totems that we hope can sustain us in this mad scramble that is life. It’s what grownups do.
“What I remember most is a letter you sent me once,” she later said, “when you were still in Grade Six.”
“I sent you a letter?” This one I didn’t remember.
“Yes, when I was still working as a nurse in New York,” she said. “I still have that letter. It’s pasted in one of my albums. It was a really well-written letter, for somebody your age—and I still show it to friends, and I tell them, this boy here? He’s a writer now.”
“What did I say?”
“You told me that one day you would love to visit Disney World. It was your dream.”
“I did? It was?”
I vaguely remembered having a Disney phase in childhood. I had watched all the films—both live action and animation, had drawn all the zany characters in hundreds of sketchpads, had collected all the brochures about the Happiest Place on Earth. I could still scrawl out, until today, Disney’s famous signature in one go, and without batting an eyelash; Mickey Mouse’s face is just a sketch away from any pencil.
So I told myself, she is telling the truth.
“And did you know that I live in Orlando now? In Florida,” she said. “So you can visit me any time, and fulfill that dream.” She laughed. I smiled, unbelievably non-committal.
But the years have taught me detachment, even from silly childhood dreams.
Soon, she was talking with mother about me—how I was like as a kid, for example. It was then that I caught a glimpse of myself, my past at the very least, as others saw me. I was that needful kid? They called it something else. “Parayigon man na siya sa una,” mother said. Parayigon. The needful charm of little children. I shook my head a little, just enough that they wouldn’t see me.
I don’t remember much how the rest of that evening went. Only that it ended. That she had gone down with us in the elevator to our waiting car. That we had said our goodbyes, and she had said, “I hope to see you when you get to the U.S.,” and that I had nodded.
I remembered having this persistent thought though: that the past is an uncomfortable place of such aching familiarity—and there is a reason why it feels like a different country, why it’s perfectly behind us. The car moved. It was already late at night. I looked at the silent witness of stars, and felt the tug of the present and the future suddenly colliding. I’m here, I told myself.
7:46 PM |
Amihan Explores Femininity and Power in New Art Exhibit at Silliman
The exhibit title evokes power and femininity; it paraphrases a chess term about how a pawn journeys across the length of a board to become a queen. Amihan, the eldest daughter of the Jumalon family of painters, shows us glimpses of her own journey in becoming an artist and a mother in the above-titled art show. It opens at the Luce Auditorium Foyer Gallery at Silliman University in Dumaguete on 24 July 2010 at 5:30 P.M.
The exhibit is part of the 48th cultural season of the Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee.
“Being a mother and an artist is like walking a tightrope. If I fall, something breaks. You can’t run, you don’t have the time. So you tread slowly and allow these roles to serve as your balance beam,” says the artist. “Queen Building is a visual, surreal chronicle about undertaking and maintaining these roles.”
The works in this coming exhibit all feature female figures, which have been Amihan’s primary subjects all throughout her career as a visual artist. Some are grim personas born out of the artist’s struggles to fuse being a mother and an artist in the years she has been largely absent from the art scene. Some are painted almost like mythological figures; dream symbols that evoke a particular aspect of women’s experiences. And some are virtually self-portraits, the artist recreating and discovering facets of herself.
Thus, on ‘Iron Maiden’ (acrylic on canvas), we see the artist’s implacable likeness personifying a medieval torture device while another figure crawls out of its dark, womb-like recess. The monochromatic painting manages to evoke both aggression and femininity, qualities that can be found in the artist’s earlier paintings.
In ‘Lovers’ (acrylic on canvas), we see the artist recreating herself once again, this time as two copies of herself, setting them up in mischievous poses while a huge mastodon skull dominates the background.
We see another figure with her likeness in ‘Magician’ (acrylic on canvas), which provides a colorful counterpoint, not only to the more muted approach of the other works, but to the mother-and-child genre paintings. This large-scale work features a portrait of the artist with her hands inside a barrel, her young son, and another hooded female figure. Naïve stick figures of monsters (which her son doodled) dance in the background.
The personal becomes the universal. “Queen building” is a reflection of the multitude of roles and personas worn by women. It is in these explorations of self as archetypal female subjects that Amihan’s work shines.
The exhibit runs until August 14, and is open to the public. For more information, please call (034) 422-6002 loc. 520 or 09173235953. (Bendix Fernandez for the Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee)
Looking back, sitting there outside Dencio’s in Harbor Square, a stone’s throw away from the Cultural Center of the Philippines, it felt good to be just a mere spectator for once. Because last year, in the Cinemalaya, I was part of its Film Congress as a representative of the filmmaking scene in Dumaguete—and it was the usual part work, part pleasure things. But this year, it was all pure pleasure, pure moviegoing relaxation.
I was, to cite an example, relaxing, taking the night in, and drinking San Mig Lite outside Dencio's with the screenwriter Armando Lao.
Earlier that weekend, I had planed in from Dumaguete just for the Cinemalaya and to process my U.S. visa for my fellowship in the International Writers Program in Iowa. It was the start of a good weekend, and the film festival—the most acclaimed of its kind this part of the Philippines—had just began. People I know from film were suddenly everywhere. I’ve always loved this kind of Manila trips that I take; they are always occasions for instant reunions. People you only see in Facebook are suddenly there in front of you, in the flesh. And the hugs and the handshakes are constant, they fly everywhere.
That Saturday, I had gone to the launch of three books being put out by newbie publisher Gilbert Sape of Grey Matter Publishing—two of them by good friends of mine, people I “hang” out with in the blogging world. There’s Dear Migs: Letters to the Manila Gay Guy by “Migs” and edited by Philippine Daily Inquirer theater critic Gibbs Cadiz, and then there’s The Wet Book: Stories From the Bathhouse by Joel Macaventa, alias McVie, and edited by the film producer and writer Raymond Lee. The launch was in Quezon City—and the place, which was the studio of the photographer Ian Felix Alquiros, was packed. I met old friends and new—the writers J. Neil Garcia, Moki Villegas, and Ronald Baytan, the visual artist Daniel Palma Tayoma, the director Jade Castro of Endo fame, the TV broadcasters RG Cruz and Ryan Edward Chua, among many others. Hugs, handshakes. I saw Carlo Vergara, the genius behind ZsaZsa Zaturnnah—and we both exclaimed with such delight: “Finally!” Another round of hugs.
Then it was back to Manila, to the lovely Syquia Building near Malate, where I dined on varieties of cheese and wine and cold cuts in the beautiful apartment of the director Butch Perez.
Butch had a great view of the Manila Bay, and he entertained us—the writers Ginny Mata, Kit Kwe, Marc Escalona Gaba, and Kris Lacaba—to the disco beat of David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s Imelda musical Here Lies Love. We talked about Iowa winters and Negrense Chinese matriarchs with recipes and the lives and loves of people we know. The usual stuff.
On Sunday, there was the late night beer with Bing Lao. “You are a god,” I had told Bing earlier—a compliment he must get a lot. This is the screenplay writer, after all, of all those acclaimed movies, from Jeffrey Jeturian’s Pila Balde and Sana Pag-ibig Na and Kubrador to Brillante Mendoza’s Serbis and Kinatay, those controversial Cannes Film Festival winners that has brought to the world a concept of film writing that is gaining traction the way the Danish had with its Dogme 95. In Bing’s case, it is the Found Story concept that is central to the style of such emerging filmmakers as Francis X. Pasion, Jay Altarejos, Jeturian, and Mendoza, among others.
He had been going around the CCP complex among the throng that constituted the devotees of the Cinemalaya Film Festival, filming Mark Xander Fabillar (who has a supporting turn in Pink Halo-Halo) and Jay Altarejos as they went about their way welcoming people to the gala premiere of Jay’s latest film. It was going to be a kind of pseudo-documentary, and I was in the middle of the shoot. Later, after the premiere, the beer came, and the talk and banter.
People came and went. Joel Torre passed by. Raymond Lee stopped by, and I told him, “When are you going to finish Patayin sa Shokot si Remington? I can’t wait to see it na.” He laughed and did a short curtsy. That was it. The director Raya Martin also passed by, sporting a new look of cropped hair. “When did you come back?” I asked him, “I thought you were holed up somewhere in Paris or wherever.” We hugged, and he said, “I’m just here, just lying low.” I laughed.
The female lead of Halo-Halo, the wonderful Angeli Bayani, soon joined us—and it was the start of the marathon to a long, beautiful night where everybody pitched in to share “talk” and industry tidbits, all told in gestures and enunciations of grand drama. You know, theater and film people.
I called her the new Meryl Streep. She blushed. She was transcendent in Pink Halo-Halo, a film of such beautiful simplicity that I turned to Jay, who was sitting beside me in the Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo, and said, “I hate you. Pinaiyak mo ako.” And I thought of that, and was bemused by how far Jay had come—from the titillations of Ang Lalake sa Parola and Ang Lihim ni Antonio to the grit of Ang Laro sa Buhay ni Juan to the heart of Pink Halo-Halo. Because sometimes it’s hard when you find yourself put in a box by other people—and not allowed to be anything more. “Hindi ka na bold gay films!” the magnificent Ed de los Santos Cabagnot had told him earlier, and broke into boisterous laughter.
We all laughed, too.
And that was it that weekend. Those nights. With Manila friends.
And then, two days later, I escaped Typhoon Basyang by minutes, and planed all the way back to my Negros town, where everything is quieter. Quiet, yes—but it has also become a reservoir of so much missing other people not here.
I have a love-hate relationship with performance art. When it’s good, it blows our minds and makes us reach deep within ourselves, asking questions about this and that. It transcends its inherent strangeness—and all performance art is strange—and makes the familiar both unfamiliar and intimate at the same time.
But when it’s bad, you feel like a monkey’s uncle.
Once in Hayahay I had to sit through a turgid piece by some performance artist from Manila, whose work consisted of reading aloud to the microphone entries from the Webster’s Dictionary. It’s not that I didn’t get it: it was just a bad piece, a complete waste of time—and like the worst of junk art, it didn’t give us anything new. “If I wanted to get the definition of the word ‘ghastly,’ I’d be home and find my own dictionary,” I told my companion. “I didn’t have to come here all the way through the rain, with an order of beer.”
But all performance art always courts the tricky borders of ghastliness and transcendence. Some do it though with the command of the true artist. I know the writer Vim Nadera does his performances with much wit and aplomb. In Dumaguete, there is Tara Ilic whose feminist moanings are designed to make the hair at the back of your neck stand.
There have been a lot of performance artists whose place in the world of art is now part of history: Yves Klein, Japan’s Gutai Group, Joseph Beuys, Allan Kaprow, and the controversial Carolee Schneemann. They all have put their distinct signatures to the art form—which is an inevitability—but all subscribe to the general definition, here provided by Wikipedia, of the art “in which the actions of an individual, or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work, and can happen anywhere, at any time, or for any length of time, involving any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer’s body, and a relationship between performer and audience.”
Let me give a popular example. In 1975, the great performance artist Chris Burden unveiled one of his most well-known works, in Doomed, in which he lay motionless in a gallery at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. He was under a slanted sheet of glass with a clock running nearby.
The hours passed. People were beginning to be worried—Mr. Burden had not had any food or water or any break to relieve himself. What the museum administrators did not quiet know was that Mr. Burden hatched the idea for the piece that he would remain, “doomed,” in that position until someone or something would interfere in some way.
The film critic Roger Ebert writes of that event, where he quotes museum curator Alene Valkanas:
’The piece ended at 5:20,' she said. Forty-five hours. 'We felt a moral obligation not to interfere with Burden’s intentions, but we felt we couldn’t stand by and allow him to do serious physical harm to himself. There was a possibility he was in such a deep trance that he didn’t have control over his will. We decided to place a pitcher of water next to his head and see if he would drink from it. The moment we put the water down, Chris got up, walked into the next room, returned with a hammer and a sealed envelope, and smashed the clock, stopping it.’
The envelope contained Burden’s explanation of the piece. It consisted, he had written, of three elements: the clock, the glass, and himself. The piece would continue, he said, until the museum staff acted on one of the three elements. By providing the pitcher of water, they had done so.
‘I was prepared to lie in this position indefinitely,’ he wrote. ‘The responsibility for ending the piece rested with the museum staff but they were always unaware of this crucial aspect’...
‘My God,’ Valkanas said. ‘All we had to do was end it ourselves, and we thought the rules of the piece required us to do nothing.’
It blows the mind. But while performance art has become a mainstay in the world of art in general, in terms of popular acceptance and visibility, it still has to take its roots in the culture of Dumaguete. In that sense, the city is “ripe” for a good introduction into the best of local performance art, with Russ Raniel Ligtas of Cebu City and Razceljan Salvarita of Bacolod City and Dumaguete.
Mr. Ligtas is a visual and performance artist who regularly performs with Cebu’s only performance art group XO?. His performances involve dance, costuming, and pop culture elements. He writes poetry and other creative text and is a member of the Cebuano writer’s group Bathalad Inc.
Mr. Salvarita, on the other hand, is a member of a family of artists based in Bacolod, but is now based in Dumaguete City and Bali, Indonesia. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication at Silliman University, where he also later pursued a master’s degree in Environmental Policy. Razcel, perhaps Dumaguete’s fast-rising young visual artist is also a writer, a photographer, a performance artist, an environmental activist. He is best remembered as the person whose body was painted white and then who walked around Dumaguete semi-naked to call attention to his “Save the Balinsasayao Twin Lakes” campaign. He has also founded the collective art group Artantrum.
On 16 July 2010, each one will present a suite of three performances, alternating with each other. The combined work, titled Russ/Raz: A Duet in Performance Art, is sponsored by the Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee, and will be performed at the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium Lobby at 6:00 PM.
It is open to the public, and they are prepared to blow our minds with this duet of strangeness involving body and time and space and us, the spectators.
1:00 PM |
Acclaimed Rondalla Groups Invade Silliman
Two rondalla groups will perform in a rare full day of rondalla performances at Silliman University’s Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium. The acclaimed Celso Espejo Rondalla and the La Libertad Children’s Rondalla are slated to do back-to-back performances on 17 July 2010, Saturday.
The Celso Espejo Rondalla, who will give a matinee performance at 3 PM and a gala performance at 8 PM, is composed of two generations of outstanding rondalla players: the senior members are professionals in their chosen fields while the younger ones are college students. The members were winners in the National Music Competitions for the Young Artists (NAMCYA), either as a solo instrumentalist or members of rondalla ensembles.
The group, named after Maestro Celso Espejo, the group’s conductor and one of the pillars of the Philippine Rondalla, was one of the performers in Cuerdas nin Cagabsan: The 1st International Rondalla Festival in Naga and Legazpi Cities, where they made an outstanding performance of light classics and contemporary Filipino compositions for rondalla. It was also one of the crowd favorites in Cuerdas Sa Panaghiusa: The 2nd International Rondalla Festival in Dumaguete.
The La Libertad Children’s Rondalla, on the other hand, will perform twice in the morning, at 8:30 and 10 A.M. This show is part of the Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee’s outreach program, with this show designed specifically for children.
A fast-rising cultural act from the municipality of La Libertad, the group started when the town became a recipient of a set of rondalla instruments donated by the Provincial Government of Negros Oriental through Board Member Mariant E. Villegas. Then La Libertad Mayor Jocelyn Sy-Limkaichong, now the First District Representative of Negros Oriental, initiated the rondalla training program when she invited Mr. Ian Encarnacion, a voice major in Silliman University and a member of Kwerdas de Negros, to initiate a musical group in the town of La Libertad. The move sprang from Rep. Limkaichong’s vision to preserve local culture and revive an interest in Filipiniana.
Most of the members of the group are elementary school children, from grade four to five of Pio Banogon Elementary School.
Tickets for the Celso Espejo Rondalla Concert are available at P200 for the matinee and P300 for the gala show. Tickets for the La Libertad Children’s Rondalla are available at P100. For inquiries, please call (035) 422-6002 LOC. 520 or 09173235953.
This song, a cover of a U2 classic and interpreted to new rawness by Mary J. Blige, gets to your guts and rips out every strand of beautiful anger. And it's strange, because this is my anthem now. And you, of all people, gave this to me.
I'm not exactly sure what happened. But I can't stop listening to this song. It began that Saturday night when, at the end of their concert for "Harana" at the Claire Isabel McGill Luce Auditorium, the ensemble from the Philippine Opera Company decided to do an encore. They chose "Gaano Ko Ikaw Kamahal," a popular Filipino folk song composed by the National Artist for Music Ernani Joson Cuenco with lyrics by Levi Celerio, another National Artist. They belted out the song as they roamed the auditorium house, shaking everybody's hands. The audience, at full capacity for the Luce, were already in awe from the concert itself: the result was electric. It brought tears to my eyes.
Since then, I can't stop listening to this song. The clip above is from Legaci, an acapella group from the U.S. Here's one more, arranged by international conductor Redentor Romero and played by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra...
I don't know why this song just speaks to me at this moment. Maybe because of its overwhelming drama? It is a song after all where the lover declares his undying love for the beloved. He assures the beloved that he/she is the only one in his life and assures him/her that his love will not fade, "tulad din ng umagang may pag-asang sumisikat." Ouch. So anyway...
7:00 PM |
High School Blues, Sixteen Years Too Late
There's something I need to get off my chest. I don't know why this bothers me so. This is usually something I totally ignore -- but my mind keeps returning to this, like the way we do with scabs we love to pick, again and again. I have a high school classmate. A girl. Pretty, let's just say. She was normal in high school, I guess. I don't really remember her much. And I'm actually closer to her younger sister. This one hasn't been to any of the reunions, so I have completely forgotten her. Last May, she added me in Facebook. I remembered her name, it sounded familiar. "Hey, it's that girl," I said. I clicked "Confirm."
Let's call her Suzy J.
The next day, Suzy J. writes me a dramatic letter. How she has never forgiven me for something. You see, in Silliman High, we have this tradition in the Junior Sillimanian, the high school paper, where specific members of the roster of graduating honor students would write an assigned essay. One is the Class Will and Testament, where the Graduating Seniors bequeath responsibilities -- even talent! and specific things like books and what-not! -- to the members of the Junior Class. Another one is the Class Prophecy, where an appointed "prophet" predicts the future of the Seniors. Here we marry off each other, give each other fantastic jobs, and exile each other to even more fantastic foreign lands. All in good fun of course.
Come to think of it, I think I wrote both. Anyway...
Suzy J. wrote me in Facebook [unedited]:
Ian, you forgot to put my name as one of your classmates who have a golden voice in the Last Will and Testament in Highschool... Marrianne Joy Ga was defeated by me in the Singing Contest. I always won singing contest inspite of me being Philosopo .. i am not that ugly... I also have a golden voice... Anyway, I understand although I was deeply hurt by it.. You must have been busy studying you forgot to know your classmates more... I understand that you need to study because you need to... I just want to express how I felt about the Last Will and Testament you gave years back.. What a relief I finally said that to you.. God bless you... But I am thankful you never failed to know I've got brains more than I have the body and I love you for that.. It is just that I reaally do have a lovely voice.. hehhehhhe. LOL...
My immediate reaction went this way: Sheeesh, girl. High school was fifteen years ago. Grow up! I never replied. Still, I categorized her in one of my many Facebook friend tags, and in her particular case: "High School Buddies" + "No Chat Zone."
The other week, at the apex of preparations for the opening of the 48th Cultural Season of Silliman University, where I am a member of the Cultural Affairs Committee [in charge of publicity and general programming], I sent invitations of our upcoming events for the year to specific people. Facebook helps a lot. And tags in Facebook help in selecting special targets; and because this was a Silliman event, I naturally included in the invitation everybody categorized as a "High School Buddy."
She soon replied with something terse: "Stop sending me invitations. I'm in Ateneo now."
In that haughty tone that just riles you up. It says, I'm in Arneo now, I cahn't be bothered.
I replied: "Hormonal much. No wonder I don't remember you from high school."
9:07 PM |
Writing and Reading: A Rant of Sorts
