Sinug dance: New keeper takes on family legacy

CEBU, Philippines - Dressed in beige Filipiniana, 64-year-old Carolina Diola welcomed the miraculous image of the Santo Niño at the Pier 1 on Saturday after the fluvial procession at Mactan Channel.

The smiling Caro-lina was with the group of more than 80 young dancers venerating the Holy Child. Carolina is now the new keeper of the “Sinug steps and drumbeat” handed down from generations, an undeniably precious Cebu heritage that needs to be kept alive.

 The Sinug dance created during the Spanish times to venerate the image of the Holy Child Jesus or the Santo Niño has been adapted to what we know now as the modern day Sinulog Festival.

 Before Carolina, her aunt Teresita “Titang” Diola was the keeper of the steps for decades until her death in 2013 at the age of 94.

The ancestry of the Diolas of Barangay Mabolo has been marked in Cebu history as the original Sinulog dancers.

 The unmarried Titang got the task from father Buenaventura who also got it from his parents. Titang was a Sinug dancer when she was still a kid and so is Carolina during her childhood.

 The Sinug is a dance that depicts the water current with its basic steps: two steps forward, one step backward.

 Carolina is now confident she could carry out the responsibility she was given. This was far from the hesitations she remembered she felt three years ago when the dying Titang asked her to carry on as the new keeper of the dance.

 With more than 85 dancers who are their relatives joining her at the pier 1 activity, Carolina believed that the dance steps will still live on even after her.

 “I am very lucky that I was chosen to continue the tradition. And these dancers that I have now are not dancers plucked from just about anywhere. These are grandsons, great grandsons, nieces, nephews, all relatives,” she said in Cebuano.

 Carolina was like a daughter to her aunt Titang who took care of her when she was still a kid. When Titang became frail and sickly from old age, Carolina was also there to take care of her until her last breath.

 When Titang was seriously ill she told Carolina to promise not to let the original Sinug die.

 “I replied to her that I don’t know how to play the drums. Just let me dance instead. But she told me not to worry, as she will take care of me even when she is gone. I told her that how is that possible when you’re already dead,” Carolina narrated.

 Carolina vividly remembered the several times that Titang clasped her hands as if she is giving something from thin air while asking her to accept the role to preserve the dance to its original form without adding nor removing some steps.

 However, Carolina until now is not comfortable with playing the drums for the Sinug beat. She got her son instead to play the drums everytime she dances the Sinug usually away from the modern street dancing festival competition.

 Carolina said that their ancestors have specifically prohibited the use of their Sinug to contests as this is also a form of prayer to the Santo Niño.

“So when she died I accepted to become the keeper. I accepted everything that she wants me to accept. Maybe even an anting-anting. (laughs). Maybe the talisman that would give me the ability to teach the dance easily to the younger ones in the family,” she said.

 She could not explain, now that she is the keeper of the Sinug, how easy it is for her to teach the steps to the younger generations of their family.

 “These steps I told them for just a few days and they learned it all,” pointing to the little children who were part of their dancing group that welcomed the Santo Niño when it was brought back to the Basilica from the fluvial procession. — (FREEMAN)