Queseo Festival De Compostela, Cebu

CEBU, Philippines - The Municipality of Compostela has adopted the one town-one product (OTOP) eco-tourism drive of Cebu Province, dropping it’s well-loved religious festival Caballo Festival in honor of its Patron Saint James the Apostle to a livelihood product common to a far flung mountain baranggay Lupa, the Queseo Festival.

Queseo or cheese is a result of processing carabao milk. Many families there derive their daily earnings from the business of preparing the queseo. Thus, the local government devised this festival to promote the product.

While it is a fact that it takes a laborious process to make the festival official, developing a dance to satisfy its festival requirement is more tedious and challenging. One might consider how milking a carabao can be translated into a dance figure. But careful analysis of the movement would reveal ideas to finally develop dance figures. A little imagination and dance movement exaggerations provide what is needed. However, the rule of thumb of veering away from the concept of the actual movement must be kept in mind. There are no definitive steps as seen in the actual footage of the queseo preparation. Dance steps are supplied to complement suggestive hand gestures, which is the most important consideration.

There are seven noteworthy steps (Visayan terms) in the process of queseo-making – Limpyo (cleaning the breast part of the carabao), Puga sa Gatas (milking), Sa-an (screening the milk with a mesh), Init kaldero (heating the cauldron with burned wood), Huwad suka (pouring vinegar to heated milk and stirring), Hulma (molding the cheese) and Putos (wrapping the cheese with banana leaf strips). Dance figures are provided to demonstrate the cheese preparation. This becomes the basic figures to be manifested in the Queseo Festival jingle.

The Municipality in cooperation with the Philippine Folk Dance Society Cebu Province conducted a dance workshop last June 8, 2013 at the DM Reynes Compostela Gym to address the needs of, basically, the school contingents who are poised to present their showcase on July 24, 2013, the eve of the town fiesta. To augment the participant’s knowledge and knowhow of creating brilliant concepts and choreography for the scheduled presentation, an array of folk dances  recently introduced during the PFDS National Folk Dance Workshop was echoed in addition to the introduction of the basic figures of the festival.

Gracing the occasion in support of this grandiose project were Vice-Governor Agnes Magpale, Compostela officials headed by Mayor Joel Quiño, Vice-Mayor Josephine Abing and SB Member Tessa Cang.

Research and dance figures were made by this writer. (FREEMAN)