“There are times to cultivate and create, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally of course, there are times that are cold, and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are.”
-Chogyam Trungpa
This year, the La Salle Dance Company Jazz is going to venture into producing yet another boldly-conceptualized dance concert. In our 29th anniversary, at the dawn of our 30 glorious years, we will celebrate beginnings and re-beginnings and how much they sketch our fates, our future, may it be fruitful and successful or something that we will all have to learn from.
One story lingers at the back of my head as I was contemplating on this concept. A story of…
… a chaotic beginning, where characters has not yet built any solid definition of who they are and of their role in the society, they wander through the nothingness in, both, themselves and in the surroundings that is still awing them into total surrender. Too much of the problems and too less of the solutions come their way, inevitably leading them to be selfish, to fight for each one’s existence, to be indifferent.
When we talk about the past, it is half about the chaos, the problems, the walls that those who came before us had to face and challenge which in turn made them great and earned for them a place on the pages of our history. The battle that Rizal had to fight, for example, is one of such chaotic situations that the country suffered for, but of a great mind he picked up his pen and wrote peace, wrote order which until now, we benefit from. Another good example are wars which turn every nation, and every life in disarray; ending lives, cultures, traditions and even the mindset of those affected, but the purpose is supposedly order, peace and understanding. The purpose is a new beginning, rising from the rubbles of dilapidated buildings, ghosted towns, and piles of cadavers.
Soon these characters in my story started to go their own separate ways. From a society created as one, they scattered all over the earth to do what they think is best for themselves. From a solid core of souls they spread out into the peripheries of the land, into every frontier, away from each other. There they started with a single matchstick to light their first flame, a single seed to plant their first wheat and a single, warm egg to hatch their first meat. From this forced beginnings, they grew separately and learned similar lessons, which later, brought about the order and peace in their own separate societies and lives.
We respect every encounter, every petty fight, every little argument that we go through every day of our lives. We know that through these hardships, if we may call it that, we will learn a great deal of strength and courage and even knowledge to how to live our lives more efficiently to how to treat our neighbors better the next day.
After such an arduous process of learning through mistakes and experiences, we find ourselves amidst silence. It’s as if an angel passed by over our heads on the dead of noon casting a fast moving shadow over the smoking windows, flaming cars, weeping mothers, and empty bullets shells scattered on the streets like white quarts on the beach. We stand there alone with our hands halfway raised on both sides dirtied by grease, dust and gunpowder. Our clothes ripped in some parts. Our face smudged with a mixture of blood, sweat, tears and dust. Where do we start from here? What do we do now? These are questions that haunt us as we slowly squat in dismay and ultimately drop seated on the pavement with less hope in our glaring eyes than those in an orphan’s.
As the camera zooms out from you whose tears are slowly crawling down your cheeks, the whole surroundings is seen, that of destruction of and hopelessness. This is the “anarchic silence” a silence that dictates, a silence that we have no power over, a silence that deafens us. But we know that it is not the end.
When everything is torn down and crushed back into earth, every sin, every mistake and every memory goes down with it. Mother earth does have her ways of bringing us back to where we belong.
This is where we start, or re-start, if I may, slowly standing up and picking up the pieces that are left; walking around to find someone who might have, also, survived the whole experience and holding their hands for comfort and courage. We work under the light of the moon and we hide from the scorching heat of the sun. We have learned to love darkness for we do not want to see those ugly sights. Only until we have rebuilt everything will we be able to finally have that courage to wait for the next sunrise and greet it with pride and a smile.
This is our rendezvous point, this is where we converge to start a new travel a new future, together, again, wiser, and better.
SOME OF THE DANCE PIECES:
1: SANCTUS: A simple glorification of God’s name and thanksgiving.
2: KABASKUG (strength): This will be our chaotic start. A guest performance by the UP Pep Squad.
4: Basyo, tingga, alikabok, apoy, usok… Luha’t dugo (BATIAPOK LUGO): This piece will talk about war, about murder, about quarrels, about fights and all the misunderstandings that we could represent in a 6-minute piece.
5: ZAL: The fire that began the revolution and wrote peace on the islands of the country.
DIRECTED, CONCEPTUALIZED, WRITTEN, DESIGNED AND CHOREOGRAPHED BY:
Cast: LSDC-JAZZ, Some Alumni, UP Pep, and other great dancers.
Recent Comments