Nick Joaquin’s Tadtarin

Nick Joaquin’s short story, Summer Solstice, immortalized Paco’s Tadtarin. The feast of the Tadtarin actually starts on Holy Innocents Day and the old folks maintain that Tadtarin means "to chop into small pieces." And that it referred to the infant martyrs whose heads were decapitated by Herod on that feastday. Others, however, maintain that it is Tatarin, not Tadtarin, and attribute the name to the triple time of the fandango - ta-ta-rin, ta-ta-rin, ta-ta-rin.

Joaquin took artistic liberty to transfer the fiesta from the winter to the summer solstice, making the feast culminate on the Feast of Saint John the Baptist. In the celebration, a young girl led the procession on the first night; was replaced by a mature woman on the second; and a very old woman on the third; all carried a wand in one hand and a sheaf of seedlings on the other. On the last night, the image of the Baptist became part of the procession and the old woman ritually died and resuscitated.

The symbols are obvious: the young girl, the maiden and the aged woman represent birth, zenith and descent; the death and resurrection of the venerable woman, the midsummer sun which seems to stand still for several days before proceeding towards the opposite direction; the wand, the magic in the ritual; the seedlings, fertility. Male participation was tabooed but in the last night, the image of Saint John the Baptist was carried as a phallic symbol. To stimulate the forces of creation, everyone danced uninhibitedly during the procession. Religion has been defined as "an emotion resting on a conviction of harmony between ourselves and the universe at large." Dance is an attempt to be in rhythm with the universe. The Tadtarin had a sirenical effect on women. Girls ran away from their parents and wives from their husbands to participate in the Dionysiac debauch.

This patrimony from Paco is Manila’s oldest living dance tradition. It is a fossil that refuses to fossilize, a direct link between prehistory and history, paganism and Christianity. Without the help of any religious, government or private institution, the folk have kept the Tadtarin alive. A metaphysical writer like Jorge Luis Borges would say that the Tadtarin survived so that a Paco writer would see it and use it as the pagan basis for one of his great short stories.