February: Festival month

The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) through the Office of the President, will begin the Festival Arts Month with a flag raising ceremony dubbed Ani ng Sining sa Malaca-ñang at Kalayaan Grounds on Monday, Feb. 2.

Singing the “Pambansang Dalangin ng Alagad ng Bayan” will be the President’s Chorale, the Kalahi Chorus of the Correctional Institution for Women, the Ramon Magsaysay H.S. Chorale, with dance interpretation by Ballet’s Manila under artistic director Lisa Macuja Elizalde.

Panumpa sa Watawat ng Pilipinas will be led by DepEd Usec and NCCA Chairman Dr. Vilma L. Labrador joined by Yul Servo, city councilor and chairman of the Culture and Arts Committee. NCCA executive director and Presidential Adviser on Culture Cecille Guidote Alvarez will host the National Arts Month celebrations.

The Kalahi Program will present performances by the marginalized, abused and abandoned youth. Ani ng Sining sa Malacañang aims to re-enforce values education, confidence building and national development.

A symbolic striking of the gong will signal the opening of Sangay ng Pamahalaan which will initiate programs in various government agencies.

After Monday’s flag-raising ceremony, guests will view at the Malacañang Museum crafts of the Kalahi Arts Workshops held in the National Bilibid Prison, Correctional Institution for Women and the Children’s Hospital.

The UP, through its College of Arts and Letters and the Office of Initiatives for Culture and the Arts, presents Sarsuwela Festival 2009 from Feb. 4 to 27 at UP Diliman.

The month-long event will have sarsuwela productions of Paglipas ng Dilim (by UE Drama Company, Feb. 4-6), Walang Sugat (by Barasoain Kalinangan Foundation, Inc., Feb. 11-13). Sa Bunganga ng Pating (by FEU Art Theatre Clinique, Feb. 18-20), Ang Kiri (by Dulaang UP, Feb. 25-27), and Iloilo Zarsuela Padayon Ang Istorya (by the UP Visayas Alumni Theatre Company, Feb. 23-24) and hold film screenings of movies based on sarsuwela themes from the 1930s to the 70s such as Giliw Ko (Feb. 18), Tunay na Ina (Feb. 19), Maalaala Mo Kaya (Feb. 25) and Stardom (Feb. 26). Performances will be at 6 p.m. at the University Theater, while film screenings will be at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the UP Film Institute. Tickets are pegged at P75 while film screenings are at P50.

The festival exhibition billed Zarzuela Sarsuwela (opens Feb. 11, UP Vargas Museum) seeks to replicate the sarsuwela culture of the turn of the 20th century, allowing the viewer to situate him- or herself in the social milieu of the time through sound, image and performance. The Festival also schedules the very first national conference focusing on the many elements of the sarsuwela from Feb. 25-27, and a lecture-series in the form of tertulias for students by foremost sarsuwela scholars (Feb. 13, 20, 27).

Sarsuwela Festival 2009 aspires to provide a comprehensive understanding and a deepened appreciation of the sarsuwela, a traditional theater form that has been in existence in the country for more than 100 years and which, though not popular today, continues to be performed in selected regions of the nation. The Festival also hopes to generate a heightened enthusiasm and sustained commitment among theater practitioners, scholars, students and the public to bestow the necessary attention and commitment the sarsuwela deserves.

The festival opens with a parade on Feb. 4 at 2 p.m. at the UP Academic Oval. It will also hold a sarsuwela writing competition, conduct research to encourage more scholars and students to further the data on the sarsuwela, and create instructional materials on it.

Keeping alive one of the world’s oldest surviving crafts, textile experts, researchers, weavers, artisans, entrepreneurs and students will assemble for the 2nd ASEAN Traditional Textiles Symposium to exchange ideas to preserve and better understand the weaving traditions in the region’s communities.

“Textiles are not just cultural icons, but a way of life,” Museum Foundation president Armita Rufino said. “Founded on a common regional identity, Southeast Asian nations aim to further fuse us together by hosting this affair, where we can speak of our history in one language through the colorful spectrum of world textiles.”

Textile luminaries will present recent research on ways to develop and sustain the “products of the past.” The research of Vietnam representative Dr. Michael Howard of Simon Fraser U. will establish how the Thai and Cham people of Vietnam influenced two of Southeast Asia’s great weaving traditions.

Philippine representative Dr. Cherubim Quizon from Seton Hall U. in New Jersey has found striking stylistic similarities between Southern Mindanao’s ikat textiles with those of Borneo and Eastern Indonesia. She also examined their specific techniques and aesthetic implications and how modernity is interpreted through their contemporary textile practices.

Other RP representatives will discuss textile traditions in Southeast Asia, piña weaving in an underserved community, and symbols, meaning and power in local wear today.

Bound by the theme “Habi: Sustaining Traditional Textiles of the ASEAN,” the symposium on Feb. 1-3 at the National Museum will highlight presentation of papers and weaving workshops where specialists and practitioners will speak on the successes and challenges that face the manufacture, use, and distribution of natural fabrics, textile preservation and sustainability.

Part of the symposium is an exhibition of heritage fabrics from the National Museum collection and those of other Southeast Asian institutions, Cloth and Its Complications in Southeast Asia, curated by Marian Roces. The Museum Foundation and the National Museum, in partnership with the ASEAN Foundation and Japan/ASEAN Solidarity Fund, organized the event.