BAUTISTA The Emergence of the Ballet Dancing Body in the Philippines Redacted (original) (raw)
Related papers
Anna Pavlova, Live in Manila!: The Globalization of Ballet and its Localization in the Philippines
Jurai Sembah, 2020
Anna Pavlova was the first ballerina to tour the world, effectively globalizing ballet and transforming it from a European/Russian art form into a universal one. The places that she performed in, exotic, war-torn or on the brink of a civil revolt, with either unbearably hot or achingly cold climates, all received her differently, according to the local culture, affecting the ballerina as much as she had an effect on the people who came to see her dance. In most places, such as Cuba, Argentina, the US, Australia, and the Philippines, Pavlova had inspired the localization of ballet in their respective cultures, where appropriation had turned into tradition. This paper looks at how Anna Pavlova accomplished the globalization of ballet as a universal art form, and how it had successfully embedded itself as a local tradition in several countries, specifically in the Philippines, where there exist three professional ballet companies that are still currently active. This paper analyzes Pav...
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Filipina/x/o American Studies, 2022
DANCE, FILIPINA/X/O AMERICANS IN Filipina/x/o Americans generate dances, choreographies, and embodied movements for education, entertainment, social criticism, art, spirituality, and identity formation. This entry assumes a nonessentialist, capacious approach to the topic of Filipina/x/o Americans in dance, given the multiple intersections of the moving human body and fluid notions of the meaning of both Filipina/x/o and American. Thus, its composition is liberated from domestic, linear, biological borders so as to discuss how Spanish and U.S. colonialisms influenced the dances of people in the Philippines and North America; the existing scholarship on Filipina/x/o American (FA) dance; migration as racialized and gendered bodily movements; and geographic variations by FAs since the late 20th century. The Emperor's New Dances Since the Philippine-American War (1899-1902), the U.S. government, colonial education, and visual media manufactured dance as one of many colonial tools to institutionalize and enact policies of benevolent assimilation, civilize so-called savages, and justify immeasurable violence. These tools also included language, medicine, and sports. U.S. White supremacist logic rendered the Filipina/ x/o dancing body as a vessel for anti-blackness, native dehumanization, and orientalist Other-ing.
EMBODIED INDIGENEITY: TRANSLATING TRADITION FOR THE PHILIPPINE CONTEMPORARY DANCE STAGE
Indigenous and folk dance movement motifs, as points of inspiration and innovation for contemporary dance theater, have consistently functioned as choreographic tools in the dance theater scene in Manila. This Major Research Paper (MRP) written in fulfilment of the requirements for a Masters of Arts in Dance at York University, explores the embodiment of indigeneity in three contemporary dance theater pieces that are inspired by Filipino folk dance movements and indigenous ways of living. These pieces have been presented from 1970 to 2016 at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. My MRP primarily asks why Filipino choreographers, specifically Alice Reyes (c1970s), Agnes Locsin (c1990s) and Al Garcia (present) have had a need and artistic inclination to employ tradition for contemporary works. Through dance studies and dance anthropology methods of ethnography, archival research, and movement analysis, I elucidate how the performance of traditional dances cultivated through the nationalist rhetoric of the Bayanihan, the Marcos regime and Francisca Reyes Aquino, had created a national repertoire from which the unity of the Philippines can be corporeally imagined. When referenced and represented in different forms, such as modern and contemporary dance, this nationalist repertoire becomes a performance of nationalism and therefore gains significance and becomes consumable for the urban audience. Thus, in creating a distinct contemporary dance aesthetic in the Philippines, these choreographers transformed tradition to imagine a Filipino dancing identity that decolonizes Western form and respects the heterogeneity of the nation-state. In using traditional elements for contemporary dance theater, they create knowledge and meaning in embodying indigeneity for the urban and postcolonial context of Manila, and in embodying both Western and Philippine aesthetic values through dance.
Embodying Modernism: A Postcolonial Intervention across Filipino Dance
Amerasia Journal, 2017
This essay resurfaces the often overlooked precursors to the landmark Philippine Folk Dances and Games (1927)—works by Louis Harvy Chalif and Frederick O. England—and argues that although PFDG is regarded as the wellspring of Filipino expression, it also evidences the debate between dance as a means of choreographing colonial legitimacy and national subjectivity. The essay traces a prelude to Filipino dance nationalism and uncovers colonial ideas about dance and the racialized body in the early 1900s, and the surprising choreographic genealogies that constituted the preservation process in the 1930s.
Globalization, Habitus, and the Balletic Body
Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, 2007
The aim in this article is to write an evocative ethnography of the embodiment of ballet as a cultural practice. The authors draw on their fieldwork at the Royal Ballet (London), where they conducted 20 in-depth interviews with ballet staff (and watched "the company at work" in class, rehearsal, and performance). They explored dancers' (n = 9) and ex-dancers' (who are now teachers, administrators, and character dancers; n = 11) perceptions of their bodies, dancing careers, and the major changes that have occurred in the world of ballet over their professional lives. They focus on their accounts of the homogenizing effects of globalization on the culture of the Royal Ballet. Although this research is set within the elite and narrow cultural field of dance, the authors hope that it is an interesting addition to broader debates on the interrelationships between individuals and institutions, the body and society, and globalization and culture.
Contemporary Ballet and the Female Body Politic
This article examines a single pas de deux in Wayne McGregor's Infra (2008) with attention to ways in which choreographies, through pointework and partnering, shape the body politic of the female dancer.
Ballet and One of its Many Facets
Dawn Schultz, 2019
Ballet is one of the oldest forms of codified dance, yet when its methods are pushed beyond ideal limits, is it still considered ballet? The historical progression of ballet has been documented in fragments as its archives have been pieced together through oral tradition. Teaching and learning the craft is based on replication of the body creating lines and shapes through space as repetition is fundamental in developing proficiency in the art form designed to strengthen one both physically and mentally. Over the decades there has existed a multitude of dancers and choreographers who have contributed to the evolution of this treasured form of dance. As cultural advancement and intellectual philosophies emerge over the years, one particular individual has made a significant impact on the dance world and has proven to be an asset to the composition of its history.