Through the ballet of light and life

MANILA, Philippines - In our age of quickies and quick fixes, some things still need time to achieve fruition. Ballet dancers, for example, still practice up to eight hours each day — not just to perfect their pirouettes, but to show audiences the levels of poetic movements that the human body can do, to interpret each piece of heaven-unfastening music, and to convey what’s inexpressible about human emotions.

While most people her age could spend up to eight hours each day tweaking their Facebook or Twitter accounts, or watching the day die in a coffee shop with cups of obscenely-priced crapuccino, Candice Adea is in a dance studio, twisting, twirling and turning herself into what she is: a ballerina.

As one of the stars of Ballet Philippines (BP), Candice and the rest of the dancers practice from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. (with a two-hour break in between), from Tuesday to Saturday. That is a huge chunk of Candice’s life.

But for that sacrifice, Candice won the silver medal in the prestigious USA International Ballet Competition (USA-IBC) in Jackson, Mississippi. The USA-IBC is an Olympic-style competition where dancers vie for gold, silver and bronze medal, among other prizes. This is held only once every four years.

She performed Don Quixote for the first round and Evacuation (choreographed by former Ballet Philippines artistic director Augustus Damian III) in the semi-final round. For round three, Candice and her partner Jean Marc Cordero performed one contemporary piece, Sapin-Sapin choreographed by Victor Ursabia, and one classical piece, Diana & Acteon.

“I started dancing at the age of four,” says Candice. “Ballet, agad. Pero parang playground lang for me. I started to take it more seriously when I entered the Philippine High School for the Arts. I realized that this is my career na.”

She honed her craft under the expertise of Nonoy Froilan, Victor Ursabia and Ronilo Jaynario. At age 13, she was a semi-finalist at the 8th Asia-Pacific Ballet Competition in Tokyo, Japan. Three years later, she made it to the finals. “I saw a lot of beautiful dancers who inspired me. I wanted to be like them.” 

In 2003, she joined Ballet Philippines and has starred in stage productions such as Snow White, The Nutcracker and Amada, among others. In 2007, she competed at the 9th New York International Ballet Competition.

Well, with her victory in Mississippi, Candice Adea has made her dream come true, but she needs to churn out eight hours a day to maintain that dreamlike level of excellence.  

“Kahit sa’n kayo pumasok — music, ballet or visual arts — lahat may sacrifices, pain and depression. But you need to enjoy every single minute of it. You should really love what you’re doing.”

Another person who loves what she’s doing is Ballet Philippines president Margie Moran-Floirendo, who humbly says she sees herself as the ballet company’s “problem-solver.” Stop thinking for a moment that Margie was crowned the most beautiful woman in the universe in 1973 in Athens, Greece. For now, she and her supporters are what keep Ballet Philippines as strong as ever in its 40th year.

Margie gives the whole BP enterprise a direction.

“Aside from raising funds for our productions, the biggest challenge is to bring in the people to watch ballet performances,” says Margie, who was a ballet dancer from age eight to 18 years old as well as a dancer in the early ’70s in Broadway-style productions of Camelot and My Fair Lady.

“But (I have found out that) people are actually hungry for the arts, they just have this misconception that it’s not affordable for them. It actually is. The most expensive ticket we have is P1,100. Our season ticket is only P3,600 — four shows for the whole year. When we travel to Mindanao or Cebu, we get feedback from the people there that they want full-length ballet presentations — not just excerpts.”

She enthuses about Candice’s victory. “None of our great Filipino ballet dancers have achieved that (except for Candace).”

BP is very diverse and versatile, puts importance on the classics as well as the contemporary. “We try to (strike a) balance, get a good mix. We feature Filipino compositions, or Filipinos restage foreign productions.”

She concludes, “We always hope to develop new dancers, (we nurture) apprentices and scholars so that they can be part of the company. Our company keeps moving. (We at Ballet Philippines face the incoming challenges) mainly for the love of dance. Art is what keeps us tempered as people.”