Dancer's Blog: "Crossing Over"

I did not know how to dance, but I was there, and that made all the difference.

My pivotal turn into becoming a dancer began one evening inside a 2nd floor dance studio in Calhoun St. Makati. There I found myself doing, rather stiffly, a couple of lateral arm movements and change steps. It was October 2002. Folk dance group KALOOB was having one of their regular rehearsals for a December performance. Why I was there is beyond me now, but those virginal change steps became the makings of a new alter-ego, inside what was to me an unfolding dancing universe!

I started with KALOOB Philippine Music and Dance Ministry as a young intern. Having been trained in cultural heritage research under U.P Manila’s Philippine Arts program, my main task then was to help with the translation of a T’boli epic recorded in Mindanao by KALOOB’s founder Ed Lapiz. It was supposed to last only until the summer’s end, yet somehow I kept coming back long after my internship was over. I continued doing more research work with them and by then I have already established quite a few friendships. But most of all, there was this cocooning love affair, serendipitous though quite ungraceful, between me and dance. The first time I witnessed a KALOOB performance, I became instantly enamored by the slow, mesmerizing fluidity of the pangalay, the playful yet equally hypnotic kadal iwas (T’boli monkey dance), and the arresting charm of la jota moncadena, all part of the KALOOB repertoire.

But only as spectator, and nothing else! I never imagined to be dancing myself. And it is the fact that I was not naturally graceful that made it all surreal and unlikely. Tagalog has a fitting idiom to describe me: parehong kaliwa ang paa! At pike pa!

And rightly so, the beginning was rather shaky. Recalling that first encounter of the dance floor, it felt like me and dance literally started “on the wrong foot”. While trying out a few arm laterals and turns, I kept forgetting that I should also breathe; neck and shoulders growing stiff by the second out of minding the sequence too much. To my horror, I saw myself in the mirror. This was far from why I fell in love with dance! I thought. That time, I felt no pleasure at all from dancing.

Yet I stayed.

My first performance was predictably a disaster. By some twist of fate, I was cast in two folk-barrio dances for the Christmas performance in Makati Cinema Square, 2002. I fell embarassingly off-balance in the very physical Palu-palo dance and I was breathing like a horse after just a minute of the subli.

When I was 11, a neighbor taught me how to bicycle. I found it extremely difficult to balance that I got so frustrated, I thought it would be impossible to learn. Then it happened. After hundreds of attempts, and an equal number of falls, just as I was about to give up, I pedalled to an unprecedented distance and to my surprise, nobody was behind to assist me. The same thing happened as I tried to engage myself into dancing, this time only longer and even more frustrating. I braved not only falls, but countless humiliations and embarassments, screams from teachers and most of all, stage fright. Many who joined the group the same time as me either gave up already or were on the verge. Not to mention the thousands of times that I had to repeat the dreaded lateral with turn where I seemed to gain no development at all: shoulders stubbornly stiff, back perenially hunched.

But that is where the mystery lies, only when you try long enough, longer than others, long after many has already given up, and when you yourself are about to do the same… a sort of magic happens, not instantaneous, but a gradual unfolding. I was not fully conscious of it, but time passed, training continued, more laterals with turns and then one day, my body began to slowly experience the long awaited pleasure from the act of dancing.

The stage and the dance floor had become less and less threatening. The love affair had finally began to warm up.

Five years, many performances, and even more painful rehearsals later, my shoulders become stiff from time to time, when I don’t watch it closely, but dance gave me wings! I triumphantly crossed over to the other side!

There is something edifying about dance that makes it all worth the effort that I did. Even with all the barriers and difficulties at the beginning, one is gradually pruned, nourished and purified by the experience of having to move your body in harmony with time, space and spirit; movement celebrating life; dancing with meaning! KALOOB, I discovered later on, is not just about cultural dance performances. Having the distinction of being based in a church, the dancers of KALOOB, including myself would, every Sunday, lead a congregation to worship at the Folk Arts Theater through lively dance and music. For half an hour or so, our bodies would move in unison, in canon, or pas de deux. For a few minutes, seconds, or even less, moments come when I forget where I am, or who I was. In these fleeting segments, nobody else exists except nameless moving bodies, the dance floor and the friction created radiating through the air. Then you recover, just in time, to remember the next step. I read somewhere that a Mevlevyi or whirling dervish who practice Sufism in Turkey spins for hours non-stop. In the process, he forgets himself thus reaching a divine realm of harmony, peace and love. I aspire to get there as well, dancing.

I once faced a crossroad in my life where I stood clueless on what direction to take. At that moment, the music happened to usher me to the dance floor, where I began to change-step. I overcame my inability to dance, so I could eventually dance my way through life, and crossover to realms I’ve never been before.