Song, dance and poetry

A song has been buzzing around in my head for the last two weeks, since I caught the second weekend run of [Rock] Supremo, Ballet Philippines’ celebration of Andres Bonifacio’s 150th birthday. It is the company’s tribute not just to the Supremo but to its tradition of Neo-Filipino, a program which gives artists of different disciplines the opportunity to collaborate and experiment. [Rock] Supremo brought together three choreographers and eleven rock bands, the company’s talented dancers and a host of other artists in a wonderful, hip, catchy, snazzy, probing, pointed telling of Bonifacio’s life and controversial death.

The neanderthal in me approached a rock ballet with some trepidation. But my unease was allayed by the haunting Overture (performed by Tarsius, a duo on drums and laptop), and by the time the absolutely beautiful love song Lakambini (by Ebe Dancel, the song that’s been playing over and over in my mind) came around (with an equally beautiful pas de deux) I was totally won over. Dance, rock music and a compelling narrative make for a very potent, enriching experience.

Now more than ever we need to revisit our history. The successive sesquicentennial celebrations of the birth of our revolutionary heroes – Rizal last year, Bonifacio this year and Mabini next year – should lead us to such introspection. We often tend to romanticize the past and regard all our heroes as faultless, fighting on with only the noblest intentions and motivations. But as the story of Bonifacio and the Katipuneros and Aguinaldo shows, then as now there were political intrigues and less than noble ambitions, betrayals and yes, corruption. These shortcomings do not make them lesser heroes, just more human.

As we grow weary with scandals and anomalies coming to light one after another, let us not lose sight of the fact that we now live in the light – for if we still lived in darkness, none of these aberrations would be exposed. We should grab this opportunity to make sure the light will grow brighter and brighter and will not be extinguished.

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Here like a flash of light is a book of poetry that one can say is long overdue, but one can also say comes in its time, aged just right. The five poets in “Companionable Voices” (see page 6) came of age in the 1960s, the “bad boys” of the writers’ workshops that honed some of our most distinguished writers in English. Barkadas over beer – though one is said to prefer gin, another brandy – they are kumpadres many times over, having stood as sponsors to each other’s children, who are now surely parents themselves, making them poet-lolos or maybe even lolos-sa-tuhod.

A few months ago my colleague gave me a faxed letter he had unearthed, addressed to me and dated 24 Feb 2004, from A.Z. Jolico Cuadra, reacting to a Singkit column. The letter is faded/fading, as old fax paper is wont to do, so I must quickly make an unfading copy of this gem of a letter – plus a poem! – from one of the poets that I as a literature student at the UP studied with awe and regarded with some amount of fear.