Co. Erasga - Alvin Erasga Tolentino - Artistic Creator
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Sleepless-Transcontinental (Colonial project progress in the Philippines)
April 20, 2012
Over 20 hours of travel, arrived to a new atmosphere, air, temperature, noise frequency, time adjustment, food, water, clothing, language and people’s cultural behaviors are but a few to adapt to quickly while working transcontinental.
Upon arriving at the densely intense and hectic Manila, just a short 3 hours away is the province of Laguna, a change of air and climate again, a greener, fresher and forested area that certainly makes for the setting, history and mood for Colonial/Babaylan continuing research.
Los Banos, Laguna would be a base for the creative home research and exchanges of Colonial (part 1 of 3 artistic residencies at the University of the Philippine, Los Banos).
This leg of the creative process involved meeting with new artists, video artist/Jon lazam, composer/Angelica Dayao and costume designer/Carlo Pangunaling, these collaborators will team up with Dennis Gupa and me.
As usual, our conversations are intensive as ever sharing to these collaborators historical accounts, also interviewing some UPLB’s faculty members, new generational Filipinos living and threading to a modernize cultural dense.
On this trip, dare I mention to truly meeting a Babaylan! a power lady in stream of consciousness in modern time, yes, she is the venerable Suprema de la Iglesia del Ciudan Mistika de Dios of mount Banahaw, with sincere earthly clarity, arriving and chatting in her humble sala, she offers us, the wonderer, lunch at her table (pansit, isda, kanin at cafe/ noodle, fish, rice and coffee), with open arms to strangers!
The rest of the visits was a mystical remembrance remained in me, her intriguing presence, her way of speaking like a purely recorded Diwata /muse with gracious speeches in belief and understandings of her surroundings. In the back of my mind, I sort of sense a clearer picture of how I wish the project to be revealed in this return to the homeland and talking again with Filipino folks, to re-focus and reduce the lens of the research before a swell of a humongous informed encounter of the past and present.
There was paper work to be done as usual with Dennis, a constant approval of policy decision in the university with our arts residency, streaming and finite of ideas, learning actual Babaylan steps rooted from indigenous Palawan and yes, even striking for some real photo images in the lush green of Mt Makiling’s surroundings capturing Babaylan spirits.
The two weeks have passed, time to get to the plane again, change of time and climate, back to Vancouver now, still suffering with the time difference of Asia, but must move on quick and function as prompt and clear to my company duties.
There is no glamour going transcontinental, I am sleepless at night and awaken from another time. Vancouver at least is somewhat spring, Cherry blossoms makes me cry! Back in the studio to hunt the Colonial ideas into dance, April is work work work! I look forward to plastic abound towards ADAMEVE remount with billsy and chicken (Billy Marchenski and Alison Denham) and the arrival of German artists dancers of Cocoondance that we shall welcome for the first time in Vancouver, and celebrate for April’s International dance day and Canada’s first national dance week.
Colonial-Rituals
March 01, 2012
The 2nd research phase for Colonial project unfolded in the studio early this February while working with Filipino theatre director Dennis Gupa as part of his creative exchange to Vancouver.
During the process, the tide of information continues to haunt us both, unearthing the colonialism saga, looking back and forth and revisiting Philippines’s traumatic historical events.
Our intense discourse started last year in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia caught and filled with a passionate and longing to remember, to redress and give a creative light to the results of Colonial adversity.
After an incubated reflective time away, here in Vancouver, the recent research work expanded and culminated new insightful views, sharing and collecting conversations with a diverse range of people and through theoretical readings.
The cognitional aspect of the research was dense versus the visceral exploration; my body desired to move and release the informative elements into movements.
As the week ends, Dennis and I formed a working schematic outline, a possible guided map that will hold and direct the structure of the developing work as a performance creative project.
The recent process draws me deeply to the particular focus of the status of the Babaylan, an indigenous Filipino ancestral, a figure of earthly and divine power. Could they have completely vanished in time of colonial era and power? The dramatic encounter with the new settlers would turn their life to ravage and distraught, a disaster. But within the spiritual realm, their presences and practice remains, resonating between time past and present. The Babaylan directs me to the relation of the body to rituals, earthly and divine. Perhaps, I felt them strongly, a calling, to let the body move, to shake the entrance to colonial.
As 2011 Exits
December 07, 2011
This blog is being written in Bonn, Germany while I prepare for another show of EXpose next Tuesday at into the field dance festival at theatrerimbalsall; I started writing this blog earlier from South America but delayed posting it while on the tour with EXpose from Montevideo, below was how I started ...
While in Montevideo, Uruguay, in November 2011.
It’s spring here at the moment and days can be very bright and sunny, up to 20 degrees at times. Montevideo is a city of history with a European and South American mix of cultures with a current sense of economic strain but a rich cultural history and an innate love for the arts.
Co.ERASGA, in partnership with Complot, premiered EXpose last Tuesday at the beautiful Teatro Solis to warm Uruguayan audiences, despite a hectic technical run.
This is Co.ERASGA’s second return to South America after Venezuela in 2005 where we engaged in a five city tour of Field.
This is an opportunity to return again to EXpose, a duet with Martin Inthamoussu, rediscovering the moments and nuances of this piece after the premiere run last April in Vancouver. The piece continues to mature and we are finding depths of interpretations.
The Canadian Embassy, with Ambassador Francis Trudel, hosted a small cocktail reception Monday night on behalf of this intercontinental project at his home in Montevideo. Expressing his gratitude to the artists involved despite the lack of economic support of artists and arts globally in his speech, he emphasized that working artists, arts and cultures dynamically contributes to the social wealth of our diverse communities.
Before touring Uruguay this fall, back at home I spent my early autumn intensely focused on creating a small duet for the Vancouver project 10X10X10 presented at the dance centre Nov 12-15, 2011. I was thrilled to have Sujit Vaidya dance with me, incorporating his classical Indian background and movement vocabulary from the barathanatyam dance and to also work with Vancouver’s own composer/musician Francois Houle who created a riveting new score for the piece.
Now, continuing from Bonn and the present.
I sit in the home of artist Rafaela Giovanola, our host in Bonn, a future collaborator and dance artist that will come to be part of 2012 Exchanges series in Vancouver next spring, sharing her expertise and methods of the 9 points method by William Forsythe. I look forward to this exploration of this dance system. Rafaela was a soloist for 8 years with the Frankfurt Ballet, and she has just shared stories with me on her close relations to Billy Forsythe’s great choreographic mastery, I look forward to more evidence and stories.
EXpose takes centre stage for a European premiere at Into the Fields dance festival hosted by COCOONDANCE. An early December in Bonn is filled with Christmas’ traditional splendour, a chill in the air and a grayish sky to fill out the wintry mood. It is good to return to Germany again to gain a sense of its climate for the arts, to feel the aesthetics, politics, and energy of contemporary dance here, seeing also the works by independent artists and smaller dance companies participating in the festival.
Completing here Co.ERASGA’s season after the 2 shows of Expose, I begin to mull the situations of the upcoming the 2012 season. 2011 will soon be another year gone by, more challenging than I expected it to be. One always wishes for a better year and the prospect and outlook for an inspiring and enlightened future.
As we enter the end of this year, I write here to wish you all happy holidays, some moments of bliss and serenity.
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