Using dance to teach values

MANILA, Philippines - The past Sunday was a big day for my friend, dance teacher Gigi Felix Velarde. It was the day her Fifth Interpretative Dance Competition Festival was being launched with its first elimination round at SM Fairview. Gigi had been working on this project for about a year already and when SM agreed to sponsor the event by providing free venue, stage and sound system for the four elimination rounds plus the finals, I came on board with the desire to help her find sponsors. It sounded like a very noble project: to teach values through dance!

The festival is open to youth from age 15 and up, and the only rules are that the entries must be interpretative, and must have a theme. Gigi, idealist that she is, believes that if we develop “better people, we can have a better world.” And being a dance teacher, what other instrument would she use then? Gigi, being the daughter of renowned ballet teacher Joji Felix Velarde, and wanting to continue her mother’s legacy, chose to teach values through dance.

When I found out about Gigi’s dance festival, I offered to help. But everyone I wrote to either turned me down or did not respond at all. So much so that I started to wonder if nobody believes anymore in molding the youth through teaching them the right values. Or perhaps simply nobody is willing to fork out money for the arts — most specifically dance. What is dance after all, but merely a means of entertainment?  

 I was terribly disappointed and Gigi was alternately angry and disillusioned. She was not making money out of this project, she was in fact only charging P1,000 per group that registered. If there was any support at all it came from San Juan where Gigi hails from, and Quezon City where both the first-round eliminations and the grand finals would be held. Gigi went into this despite having no funds, and should we fail to find sponsors, even the operating expenses would come from her own pocket. I also started to question whether I was knocking on the wrong doors, and why I had not found the people who would actively support the arts.

So many groups wanted to audition, none of them from La Salle or Ateneo, mind you, and it was heartening to feel the enthusiasm of the youth to use their energies in such a positive venue. Isn’t it, after all, so much better that the youth occupy themselves with this rather than waste their time experimenting with drugs, pre-marital sex and alcohol? 

Last Sunday I sat in the audience watching 15 groups made up of youth from various organizations and schools: PULP or People Understanding Life Positively who performed about AIDS; Likhang Galaw of P.U.P. who performed to Anak about maternal love; Next to Inocence, a popular hip-hop group from Bulacan that performed the winning number about the EDSA Revolution; the Norzagaray Dance Troupe’s “Calamity”; FCPC Balik Tanaw High School Dance Troupe on social injustice, just to name a few. 

I stared at the huge backdrop and felt so sad that I was unable to put a single logo of a company there. It is just dance after all.

But how powerful these dances were! Several times during the program I found myself in tears, and getting goosebumps, because interpretative dance is a very powerful medium. The themes chosen were very poignant and close to home: an OFW’s life, love for nature, teen rebellion, the EDSA revolution, AIDS. Most of the songs used were created by Filipino musicians, therefore the performances were even nationalistic, and very moving, very touching. There were no fancy costumes, no special effects, just dancers that evoked so much meaning and emotion.

Three more eliminations will be held over the next few months and the finals will be held on June 24 at SM Fairview. I reassure Gigi that we still have time to knock on doors...that we can still hope and pray that some philanthropist out there will take heed and help us finance this project. Every peso counts, every effort matters. We can still hope that somebody with a social conscience will come forward. 

Or so we hope, or so we pray.

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If you are one of those with a few pesos to spare and your social conscience niggling at you, call GFV Dance Fusion Studio at  744-5789 or 0915-5169812, or leave a message on their Facebook page.