‘Mother of RP dance theater’

National Artist for Dance Leonor Orosa Goquingco died yesterday afternoon at Capitol Medical Center in Quezon City after suffering from a massive stroke. She was 87.

Goquingco, considered the "mother of Philippine dance theater," had recently been supervising rehearsals for a special dance concert in August of the CSB Filipinescas, a dance company she formed in her youth.

A statement released by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) said Goquingco was a pioneer in Philippine dance choreography "in balletic folkloric and Asian styles," which won her "national and international acclaim for her brilliantly pioneering efforts in the difficult art of choreography."

"As a pioneering Filipino choreographer, she stylized Philippine ballet theater for five decades, creating dance classics. Even in her senior years, she continued to stand up to the endless challenge of elevating Philippine dance as a creative art. And indeed, she succeeded in lifting it to its peak of national artistic development. She enriched the national culture and was a path breaker for others to follow," NCCA executive director Cecile Guidote Alvarez said.

For over 50 years, the Jolo-born Goquingco produced original, first-of-a-kind choreographies, mostly from her original storylines.

The late National Artist Nick Joaquin wrote: "Like all cultural heroes, Leonor Orosa enjoys a most unfair share of talent. As though it weren’t enough that she’s a great dancer and superb choreographer, here she is proving... that she’s also a fascinating and brilliant writer."

Her works include "TREND: Return to Native," "In a Javanese Garden," "Sports," "In a Concentration Camp," "The Magic Garden," "The Clowns," "Firebird," "Noli Dance Suite," "The Flagellant," "VINTA!" and "The Creation."

Her most ambitious opus was the dance epic "Filipinescas: Philippine Life, Legend and Lore," through which Orosa extolled the native folk dance as a mirror of Philippine culture, from pagan to modern times, and up to its highest stage of development.

Until her death, she was the Honorary Chair of the Association of Ballet Academies of the Philippines, and was a founding member of the Philippine Ballet Theater.

Joaquin, who like Orosa won the National Artist award in 1976, wrote in an essay published in a book on national artists by the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP): "Tomorrow’s Philippine dancers will be especially indebted to Leonor Orosa, who first showed how the dance steps of our people can be used to express the drama of our lives, and who, by fusing together several dances in significant groups, created the mold in which they are now presented — a mold that she herself may ultimately break, in her endless craving for something ‘really new.’"

Goquingco spent her childhood in Sulu, and though she was born in Jolo, the Orosas are actually from Batangas, since her parents were both doctors assigned to that Mindanao province during the American period.

When the Orosa family returned to Manila, Goquingco’s teachers included Francisca Reyes — also declared National Artist in 1973 — and Luva Adameit. She studied at Philippine Women’s University and later transferred to St. Scholastica’s College. She also studied the dramatic arts in New York, where in a number for the United Nations she recreated the tinikling, updating its old plodding tempo to one of renewed vigor.

Philippine dance trotted around the globe through Goquingco — in the EXPO ’70 in Japan and at the Festival Folklorico in Spain, among other sundry points between.

The spirit of improvisation inherent in the works of Goquingco is manifest in the work of succeeding generations of dancer-choreographers, notably that of the sisters Denisa Reyes and Edna Vida.

Goquingco is the sister of STAR columnist Rosalinda Orosa, whom was recently awarded by President Arroyo as one of 31 Filipino women with the "PAMA-AS: Gintong Bai Award" (Thank you to Outstanding Women Leaders) in Palace rites last July 7.

A board resolution of the NCCA, chaired by National Historical Institute head Ambeth Ocampo, was passed providing support for the initiatives of Goquingco, to preserve Orosa’s training and production modules as her legacy, to continually nurture dancers by establishing the CSB Filipinescas Dance Company.

Details of the necrological services at the CCP to be presided over by CCP president Nestor Jardin, and the accompanying state funeral will be announced later.