Filipinescas and CSB: Forging a partnership

The Filipinescas Dance Company’s last of five world tours was in 1974, and the late National Artist in Dance, Leonor Orosa Goquingco, its choreographer-director, thought of reviving it in an academic milieu. She initially thought of Assumption Convent because the Assumption nuns had earlier taken the Filipinescas to Rome on the occasion of the beatification of the Convent’s founder, Blessed Marie Eugenie.

The Filipinescas performance so impressed the international congregation of nuns, the students and the rest of the audience in Rome that the dancers got a standing ovation.

Despite this, however, Leonor subsequently thought of aligning Filipinescas with the De La Salle College, her son Benjamin Goquingco Jr. being an alumnus of the College and a former student of the then acting president of the De La Salle System, Ms. Carmencita Quebengco.

Further, the college being co-educational, it would provide Leonor with a steady stream of boys and girls as potential dancers. Consequently, she wrote a letter to Ms. Quebengco, broaching in it the idea of re-staging the cultural landmark, namely, the program "Filipinescas: Philippine Life, Legend and Lore in Dance".

Would the idea be feasible? Leonor asked. With Bobby Caballero, an advertising whiz and a former Filipinescas dancer, Leonor felt it would be fitting to have the De La Salle System share in the mechanics of reviving her magnum opus.

Ms. Quebengco thought the project a worthy one; further, she felt that Leonor as National Artist in Dance would lend prestige to the College of St. Benilde which would take direct part in reviving her work.

Thus, a partnership was forged between the Filipinescas and the College of St. Benilde with Bro. Armin Luistro, then incoming president, heartily endorsing it.

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The last of Filipinescas’ five highly acclaimed tours was in 1974, with engagements in North and South America, Europe including the Scandinavian countries, Mexico, Russia, Hawaii and Asia.

On its very first trip abroad in 1961, Doña Carmen Polo de Franco told Leonor in Madrid: "Please come back soon so that more of Spain can see the beauty of your dances." On that same trip, Filipinescas won the Grand Prize at the IV Hispano-Americano Festival Folklorico in Caceres, under the category "inspiracion folklorica".

Sight unseen, it was invited to participate in the X International Music Festival in Santander. "The sensation of Spain", observed Hoja de Lunes; "The revelation of the Festival," wrote Alerta.

Filipinescas received similarly glowing praise everywhere it was shown. In Russia, Sergei Evelinov, director of Tchaikovsky Hall, commented: "Tres magnifique; great art, very original." Jean Battey of the Washington Post wrote: "Nothing short of superb."

Filipinescas was the first Philippine dance company to perform in the United Arab Republic, East and West Pakistan, and Portugal. In Asia, it was viewed by King Bhumipol and Queen Sirikit of Thailand, the Prime Minister of Malaya, Prince Karim Aga Khan, the Crown Prince of Johore, the Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew who commented: "An excellent show".

"Filipinescas: Philippine Life, Legend and Lore in Dance" (variously described as "an epic," "a saga," and "a synthesis of history, legend and tradition") includes, among countless trail-blazers in dance-theater, the first choreography of native Lenten practices: the flagellantes, the religious procession with the lights, the first trading scene and barter; the first depiction of a fiesta, the first choreography of native games such as the palo cebo, and what has become the Filipinescas’ signature dance: the sabung, the first graphic, explicit depiction of an actual cockfight as a sport in a realistic setting, complete with a grand entrance of the cocks, the Kristo, and the bettors.

Her "Tribal Story" was the first suite in Mt. Province dance styles woven around the death of a tribal warrior. Her "Morolandia II" was the first dance interpretation of a Muslim Royal Wedding, the arrival of the Spaniards and the Philippines’ subsequent Christianization.

When the Oxonian Jesuit Fr. James Donelan saw Filipinescas in 1963, he commented: "A vivid, unforgettable reincarnation of Philippine cultural history and of the history and spirit of the Filipino people."

"Filipinescas" would not have drawn such praise from the cognoscenti had Leonor merely shown a string of folk dances. Using these dances as basis, she expanded and imbued them with continuity, characterization, symbolism, dramatic and emotional content. In other words, while retaining the essence and ambiance of indigenous material, she forged from it a new language, a rich Philippine vocabulary of movement with which she created form, substance and style as no other choreographer has done – and for which she was named National Artist in Creative Dance.

Pointing out the tremendous influence Leonor has single-handedly wielded on our native dance scene, literary giant Nick Joaquin wrote: "Tomorrow’s Philippine dancers will be specially indebted to Leonor Orosa who showed how Philippine dance can express the drama of our lives, and who created the mold in which it is now presented. Filipinescas is the peak. In this resumé of Philippine culture from pagan to modern times, the native dance has been brought to its highest stage of development. No further progress in this direction seems possible."

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Necrological services in honor of National Artist in Dance Leonor O. Goquingco will be held at the CCP main theater this Friday at 9 a.m. All friends, admirers and relatives are invited.