DANCING THE NATIONAL DRAMA:
THE MUSLIM SOUTH IN FILIPINO DANCE
BY WILLIAM PETERSON
William Peterson, who helped establish the
theater programs at the National University
of Singapore and the University of Waikato in
Hamilton, New Zealand, has published widely
on theater and politics in Southeast Asia and
the Pacific, including Theatre and the Politics
of Culture in Contemporary Singapore
(Wesleyan University Press, 2001). He is
currently Associate Professor of Theater
Arts and Co-Director of the International
Institute at the California State University, San
Bernardino.
Harvard Asia Quarterly
Summer 2003
T
oday the Philippines is a hostage to the wealthier nations of world,
as it exports its working-age population to fill low-wage jobs as
domestic servants and unskilled workers in Hong Kong, Singapore,
Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. Add to this the country’s staggering pov-
erty and economic inequalities, the ongoing struggle to wrest land out of
the hands of the few families who own most of the country’s productive
resources, and the continuing war against Muslims in the country’s
south,1 and it becomes clear why Filipinos may well yearn for a time
before colonization and globalization transformed the country from one
of the most promising in the region in the early 1960s into one of the
poorest and most troubled. Like many formerly-colonized nations, the
Philippines consists of many cultures and its sense of nationhood was
forged largely by growing opposition to the colonizing powers of Spain
and the United States. Given the country’s long history of colonization,
its relatively short life as an independent nation, and its current economic
and political woes, the Philippines is especially in need of cultural sym-
bols of a proud, strong, authentic, pre-colonial past.
Ironically, while when the government of the Philippines is waging a
vigorous two-pronged war with American assistance in central Mindanao
and the island of Jolo, the Muslim-influenced dance tradition of the
country’s southernmost regions fulfills this function, serving as a power-
ful icon of a unified national culture. The independent spirit of the Muslim
south – expressed through a dance form with singular, distinctive charac-
teristics – has become the dominant performance icon of a proud, vigor-
ous, independent nation. From the country’s signature dance troupe,
Bayanihan, to theme-park performances and dinner theater entertainment,
Muslim-influenced dance is ubiquitous not only in the Philippines, but
also abroad where overseas dance tours have served to create an interna-
tional image of the country with a mythic past replete with sultans and
spectacularly exotic local color.
This article seeks to interrogate the relationship between the tradi-
tional Muslim dance form known as pangalay and contemporary Filipino
politics and culture, examining how this dance tradition functions at a time
when the country faces strong internal and external challenges. I also
analyze the work of one influential group – IPAG, or the Integrated Per-
forming Arts Guild – that uses dance to highlight the conflict between
Muslims and Christians and possibly suggest an alternative future char-
acterized by mutual understanding and interdependence. Following a brief
overview of the context and basic features of this dance tradition, four
disparate sites for Muslim-influenced dance will be considered: perfor-
mances by Bayanihan, the country’s signature cultural dance company;
performances designed to enhance the dining experience of foreign tour-
ists in Manila; dance presentations at a national theme park; and the
domestic and international performances of the Mindanao-based group
IPAG. My aim here is to demonstrate not merely the pervasiveness of this
dance form, but how it operates differently in each context. On one end of
the spectrum is the Bayanihan troupe, which presents the pangalay form
as a context-free symbol of national unity cut off from its Muslim roots.
The form is used with greater complexity and deftness by IPAG, a group
that has sought to reinvigorate the tradition by acknowledging and hon-
43
oring its Muslim roots while using pangalay to dramatize the
continuing conflict between Christians and Muslims and
suggest an alternative future.
SIX CENTURIES OF MUSLIM RESISTANCE
Islam predates the Spanish conquest by three centu-
ries. It was introduced in the Philippines during the early
13th century by Arab traders and Islamic missionaries, and
later grafted onto the cultures and
language groups of the region. As
in Indonesia, Islam has historically
been capable of absorbing pre-ex-
isting, animist belief systems as
long as the public expression of
the religion involves embracing
monotheism. Though Muslims to-
day constitute only five percent
of the total population of the Phil-
ippines and nineteen percent of
Mindanao – the largest of the
southernmost islands – the culture
is strong, resilient, and has a long
history of resisting any outside
domination. Filipino Muslims are
called “Moros” (Moors in En-
glish), a legacy of Spanish coloni- Traditional pangalay dancing, employing a crouching position
and bamboo poles on which a dancer balances. (IPAG)
zation, which began in the six-
teenth century. The Spanish never successfully conquered
the Muslim-dominated areas of the south and even the
present degree of contested control over the region has
only been achieved over the last 100 years, after the
country’s nominal purchase by the US from Spain in 1898.
The US military moved into the region between 1902 and
2
1913, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Muslims. Later,
US colonial administrators encouraged resettlement of land-
less Christians from the densely populated islands of the
north to the less populated island of Mindanao, where Mus-
lims had traditionally lived as hill people rather than land-
owners.3
During the Ferdinand Marcos era, the intensity of the
conflict between the government and Muslims in the south
increased significantly. The Moro National Liberation Front
(MNLF), modeled after Islamic nationalist movements in
Malaysia and Indonesia, was formed in 1968 to fight for
independence, though by the late 1970s its ultimate goal
shifted to increased autonomy. Funded by Libya and other
Arab states, by 1974 the MNLF engaged as many as 60,000
guerrilla fighters in a full-scale war against government
forces.4 At its peak, the war involved the majority of the
country’s armed forces and seriously strained the financial
and military resources of the Marcos regime. As Muslims
constituted the minority of Mindanao by this time, many
fled to the much smaller island of Jolo, where in 1974 Presi-
dent Marcos, by then functioning as a virtual dictator,
bombed the predominantly Muslim city of Jolo.5
Not surprisingly, the island of Jolo is today a hotbed of
Islamic fundamentalism and home of Abu Sayyaf (“Bearer
of the Sword”), the most radical of all of the anti-government
forces operating in the south. It was Abu Sayyaf – an orga-
44
nization that the US and Filipino governments maintain has
links to Al Qaeda – that was responsible for the 2001 kidnap-
ping of three Americans, only one of whom survived captiv-
ity. By the early 1980s the more moderate MNLF had signed
a series of agreements with the government guaranteeing
autonomy in Muslim areas, while the relatively militant Moro
Islamic Liberation Front continues to seek an independent
Moro state. By contrast, Abu Sayyaf is fighting for an inde-
pendent state under the administration of conservative
Muslim Shari’a law. From the
point of view of the latter
group, Muslims in the south are
engaged in what they would
consider a “just struggle” or
jihad from 1521, the year the
Spanish arrived in the Philip-
pines. Over the last three de-
cades, an estimated 100,000 in-
dividuals have died in the
nearly continual fighting be-
tween Muslims and govern-
ment forces in the south,6 mak-
ing it the most bloody and pro-
tracted conflict in contempo-
rary Filipino life.
Moors have historically
been depicted even in theatri-
cal presentations as the
nation’s enemy. In the traditional Filipino komedya, a popu-
lar verse play that often dramatizes the conflict between
Muslims and Christians, plot resolution typically involves
the Muslim antagonist converting to Christianity to make
reconciliation between lovers and families of opposing faiths
possible.7 The social status of Muslims in the Philippines is
relatively low and they continue to be poorly integrated into
the dominant, Catholic culture of the more populous north
of the country, making the appropriation of their dance idi-
oms as symbols of national identity deeply ironic.
THE PANGALAY DANCE TRADITION
The signature dance style of the Muslim south is
pangalay, a form with striking similarities to dance tradi-
tions found in other Southeast Asian countries. In Indone-
sia particularly, there is a similar history of assimilating In-
dian-based dance forms in ways that are considered harmo-
nious with the practice of Islam. Pangalay, which means “to
dance,” is a product of the Tausug, Samal and Badjao peoples
of Sulu, an archipelago of some 500 islands in the southern
Philippines. Much like Thai classical dance or Javanese and
Balinese court dances, pangalay involves the hyperexten-
sion of the arms and wrists, coupled with complex and fluid
finger and hand movements. Pangalay performers tradition-
ally attach ornamental extensions to their fingers, giving
them a heightened focus similar to that found in Thai classi-
cal dance. As with Indian classical dance and other forms of
Southeast Asian traditional dance, the body’s center of grav-
ity is low and centered over the pelvis, with the bottom half
of the body capable of moving fluidly, vigorously, and quite
independently from the top. While the torso remains rela-
Harvard Asia Quarterly
Summer 2003
tively rigid, complex movements of the arms, hands and fin-
gers demand an audience member’s attention. Pangalay is
performed to the accompaniment of the kulintang, a tradi-
tional instrument similar to the Javanese gamelan that fea-
tures bronze gongs of various tones mounted horizontally
on a rack. A complete ensemble consisting of eight sets of
bronze gongs as well as larger hanging and hand-held gongs
and a drum is typically scaled-down in the context of a dance
performance.
Although pangalay is a performance tradition found in
Muslim areas, its shared characteristics
with regional dance forms suggest that
some of its features predate the arrival
of Islam in the Philippines. For Muslim The value of indigenous
fundamentalists, representation of hu- traditions has increasingly
man beings through art is considered been determined by their
sacrilegious, a factor which is respon- ability to signify a generic
sible for the relative infrequency with “otherness” in the context of
which the form is performed in Muslim a Western frame of reference.
areas today. According to Filipino dance
scholar and choreographer Ligaya
Fernando-Amilbangsa, pangalay fulfills the following so-
cial and cultural functions, virtually all of which a Muslim
fundamentalist would find objectionable: (1) to drive away
harmful sprits (saytan); (2) to counteract forces beyond their
control that cause illness or ill luck (busung); (3) to appease
or invoke the help of spirits (jinn); (4) to fulfill psychological
and disciplinary functions always in accord with ethnic
needs; or (5) to function as a social and sexual safety valve
when man-woman relationships are by tradition very re-
pressed and strictly regimented.8
Since the first three functions suggest the presence of
animist or spiritual forces that would undermine the belief in
a monotheistic conception of god, a conservative Muslim
would consider these social functions of pangalay sacrile-
gious. The final function, of providing a “sexual safety
valve,” would certainly be objectionable to many funda-
mentalists in that any public display or acknowledgment of
sexual desire between men and women would be considered
taboo. Unfortunately the predominantly Muslim regions in
the south Philippines are considered dangerous regions for
travel by non-Filipinos, a factor which makes it impossible
to independently corroborate the state of pangalay in Mus-
lim communities.
In addition to finding disapproval at the hands of many
Muslim fundamentalists, pangalay is also on the decline
due to the increasing pervasiveness of a Westernized, glo-
bal popular culture and the marginalization of indigenous
traditions.9 The value of indigenous traditions has increas-
ingly been determined by their ability to signify a kind of
generic “otherness” in the context of a Western frame of
reference. In the last twenty years, music videos have
brought this aesthetic of cultural exoticism to a much larger
global audience than had been the case when the artistic
borrowings from indigenous cultures were largely confined
to the work of a few “avant-garde” Western visual artists
and theater practitioners. While cultural borrowings are
hardly a new phenomenon, what is new is the global reach
of Western culture through media and advertising, a factor
which increasingly places a Western cultural filter between
Harvard Asia Quarterly
Summer 2003
the “native” and his or her own culture, greatly expanding
the possibilities for exoticism of one’s own culture.
BAYANIHAN’S SIGNATURE STYLE
Bayanihan, recognized as the country’s National Dance
Company by the Philippine Congress, relies extensively on
the pangalay style in much of their work. As the resident
company in the country’s most prominent performing arts
venue, the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Bayanihan
also tours extensively throughout the
world and is honored with its own Na-
tional Day every May 27th to “com-
memorate and propagate the
bayanihan spirit as the unique way of
working together as a people.”10 A core
concept underlying national identity,
the “bayanihan spirit” refers to the
ability to work together in an atmo-
sphere of collective unity. The term
bayan literally means town, nation, or
community in general, marking bayanihan in a literal sense
as “being a bayan.” To be one is to come together, but as the
literal meaning of the term suggests, there is no clear bound-
ary between town, nation or a more general sense of commu-
nity. While this sense of personal investment in the greater
social good is an obvious potential source of strength and
unity, there is also an extent to which bayanihan smoothes
over personal and cultural differences and assumes that con-
sensus is always possible. The Bayanihan Dance Company’s
appropriation of a part of the whole – specifically, the
pangalay idiom – to signify the nation is especially prob-
lematic.
In an article on Filipino American dance, Barbara Gaerlan
maps out the ways in which Muslim dance quickly emerged
as “signature pieces” of the country’s national dance troupe
shortly after its founding in 1957.11 During the Marcos era,
the exalted position of Muslim dance took on a special irony:
under normal circumstances it would not be controversial
for the President and First Lady of a nation to promote the
artistic heritage of their country. However, this period was
also the time that Marcos was fighting a particularly brutal
civil war against Moro separatists in Mindanao and Sulu. It
was at this time that the non-Christian dance suites of the
Bayanihan assumed even more prominence than they had
previously achieved. During this time the Bayanihan, with
its “signature piece,” the Singkil, became a special project
of First Lady Imelda Marcos, who provided new costumes,
encouraged frequent trips abroad, and arranged Bayanihan
performances at the presidential palace as often as once a
week.12
The irony that Muslim dance was the most extensively
used cultural symbol of nationhood at a time when relations
between Muslims and the government were especially
troubled was apparently overlooked by the First Lady, as it
continues to be today. The sheer length of colonial rule over
the Philippines makes it especially difficult to find perfor-
mance forms that reach back to a time before Catholicism
and contact with Spanish and American culture. In this con-
text, the largely unexamined and unquestioned use of
45
pangalay as a national dance style is perhaps inevitable as
it can claim the mantra of cultural purity, though only if one
is willing to ignore its more specific, local roots within the
“bayan” of Muslim towns, rather than the nation of the Phil-
ippines.
The appeal of the Bayanihan signature style extends
beyond the Philippines to the Filipino diaspora overseas,
particularly in the United States, where Filipinos constitute
the second largest Asian ethnic group after Chinese-Ameri-
cans. In urban California, where their presence is especially
strong, the pangalay style is replicated
in the cultural dance nights created
largely by and for a young, Filipino-
American audience. Bayanihan’s sig- In an age of global capitalism
nature style has profoundly affected where cultures are offered as
Filipino-American college students consumables, context is
yearning for contact with a home cul- irrelevant and surfact appeal
ture from which they are often es- is all-important.
tranged.13 Students who grew up in the
suburbs of California’s larger cities eagerly latch on to the
exoticism and orientalist tropes implicit in Bayanihan’s de-
piction of a remote, mythic past replete with rajahs and har-
ems. Indeed, students reconstitute their performance style
in the context of popular Pilipino14 Cultural Nights (PCNs), a
popular event on college campuses such as UCLA. These
PCNs in turn become the focal point in the reclamation of an
authentic Filipino cultural identity, one that many have ar-
gued has often been presented as compromised due to the
successive and pervasive influences of Spanish and Ameri-
can colonizers.
To a large extent, Bayanihan functions in a similar man-
ner on its home terrain, offering up an image of a powerful,
independent, exotic cultural past using the dance idioms of
the vanquished. The most culturally distant performance
form vis-à-vis the more populous, Tagalog-speaking, Chris-
tian north of the country is ironically the dance idiom deemed
best able to represent a vigorous, independent country freed
from European and American influences. In a similar fash-
ion, the relative absence of interest in Filipino performance
forms by scholars of Asian theater may well derive from the
common stereotype that somehow the Philippines “isn’t
Asian enough” to merit scrutiny owing to four centuries of
colonial rule. Given Bayanihan’s extensive international
tours, much of what the outside world knows about Filipino
culture is gleamed from their encounter with this form and
the relatively prominent position given to dances from Mus-
lim areas. In the next performance site under consideration,
the pangalay tradition is not appropriated to serve larger
political and cultural objectives, but is instead offered up
merely for consumption.
INSTANT ASIA
Most foreign tourists visiting Manila are far more likely
to encounter pangalay-inspired dance while dining on lob-
ster at a pricy restaurant in the city’s Ermita hotel and enter-
tainment district than on the stage of the Cultural Center of
the Philippines. The Zamboanga Restaurant, for example,
named for the region on the southern island of Mindanao
closest to the Sulu archipelago, features a range of colorful
46
and exotic Filipino dances along the lines of the “Instant
Asia” cultural shows found in Singaporean hotels. The
glossy flyer handed to would-be patrons features an image
of a highly stylized traditional sailing vessel next to an over-
sized image of a giant lobster, while the inside of the bro-
chure includes photos of performers, one of whom wears
traditional, ceremonial female Muslim attire and whose hand
gestures and crouched stance suggest pangalay. On the
same page are male and female dancers showing consider-
ably more flesh who are more suggestive of the sort of act
that might accompany a luau for tour-
ists at a hotel in Hawaii than any recog-
nizable indigenous Filipino dance tra-
dition. The text accompanying the im-
ages simply states that the restaurant
offers “exciting and colorful Filipino
dances presented by an international
dance troupe.” Just what makes the
troupe “international” is left to the reader
to determine, though the designation may be used simply to
bolster the standing of the group.
As is usually the case with cultural shows offered to
accompany a rich meal, no appreciable effort is made to
contextualize the form. Christopher Balme’s observations
about the nature of theatrical exoticism are particularly rel-
evant: “Exoticism involves the use of cultural texts purely
for their surface appeal, but with no regard to their original
cultural semantics. They mean little else than their alterity;
they are no longer texts in the semiotic sense, but merely
signs, floating signifiers of otherness.”15 In this manifesta-
tion of pangalay a context-free performance provides the
viewer with a stage filled with vaguely distant “others” and
considerable local color, basic requirements for entertain-
ment that is designed to be easy to digest. Unlike Bayanihan,
the context for the dances presented is further distanced
from any concrete point of origin. Rather than offering up
dance as a symbol of the country – a function that Bayanihan
served especially during the Marcos era – dance is offered
merely as entertainment. In an age of global capitalism where
cultures are offered as consumables, context is irrelevant
and surface appeal is all-important.
DANCING IN A THEME PARK
Perhaps less exoticized is the pangalay-inspired dance
found at the Nayong Pilipino, also known as the “Philip-
pines in Miniature,” a national cultural park that borders the
main runway of Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Air-
port. The park, which caters largely to Filipino tourists, fea-
tures miniature villages of five regions deemed to be among
the most distinctive in the country: the Tagalog region of
Luzon; Cebu, in the center of the Visayas region; Bicol, home
of a nearly-perfect volcano cone; the Cordillera, known for
its 2000-year-old rice terraces; and the Mindanao region of
the south. Each segment of the park features representative
regional architecture and some of the environmental fea-
tures of the respective areas, often in miniature, such as the
scaled-down versions of the volcanic Mount Mayon and
the famed Banaue Rice Terraces of the Cordillera.
The Mindanao village features a mosque and a torogan
Harvard Asia Quarterly
Summer 2003
– the home of a datu or a Muslim village leader – as well as
other elaborate village homes with the distinctive soaring
rooflines found in the region. In addition to constituting the
most elaborate segment of the park, the Mindanao region
anchors the far end of the park; it is situated in the most
geographically remote spot from the main gate, as if mirror-
ing its actual geographical position vis-à-vis the capital city
of Manila. The Mindanao village is also the only area in the
park with a permanent space devoted to what are billed in
the park brochure as “cultural performances,” held twice a
day every weekend, and featuring the
Nayong Pilipino Dance Troupe. I
watched the monthly “lagoon show,”
in which a considerable entourage fea- By mispresenting performance
turing an actor attired as a datu and his conditions in a village
extended family arrive in rafts from context, stereotypes about
across a nearby lagoon, disembarking Muslim culture are reinforced.
at the performance pavilion amid great
fanfare to the accompaniment of a kulintang ensemble. A
range of dances based on the pangalay style are performed
in front of the piercing gaze of a datu who occupies an elabo-
rately carved chair while two women clad in a colorful ver-
sion of traditional Muslim attire sit at his feet. All three face
out toward the audience and though their visual focus is not
always directed at the performers, the three are clearly the
intended fictional audience for the performance event. Un-
derscored by the staging is a sense that dance is for the
pleasure of the top man of the village while the women occu-
pying the positions on the floor are marked as subservient.
The notion that these performances functioned an enter-
tainment for a powerful datu and his “harem” of women
harkens back to the orientalist tropes present in Bayanihan’s
staging of dance from Muslim areas,16 and has little corre-
spondence with reality.
While the larger and more complete physical and cul-
tural environment of the Mindanao village provides a wider
context for this performance event than one would encoun-
ter at a dinnertime cultural show, any sense of how these
dance traditions might be integrated into the life of the com-
munity that created them is largely absent. Pangalay is not
the exclusive province of the village headman, and the ways
in which the dances reflect the rhythms of village and rural
life are undercut by presenting them merely as offerings to a
village elder. Even though one would hardly expect a thor-
ough contextualization of traditional dance in a theme park
performance, there is still an extent to which the communal
ownership of these traditional forms is somewhat compro-
mised. Furthermore, by misrepresenting performance condi-
tions in a village context, stereotypes about Muslim culture
can only be reinforced.
On the issue of cultural ownership, Rustom Bharucha
observes, “the cultural resources of indigenous peoples and
tribal communities are particularly vulnerable to misuse be-
cause they are not owned by any defined party; they belong
17
to the entire community.” Spectatorship in this context is
presumed to be limited to the datu, while ownership of the
dance forms is not connected to the village, but rather the
dance troupe presenting them in a the cultural theme park.
Any inkling of where these traditions come from is absent, a
common occurrence when indigenous traditions are appro-
Harvard Asia Quarterly
Summer 2003
priated as “ethno-show biz.” As with theme-park perfor-
mances elsewhere, the use of elaborate props, live music,
and a complex and visually stimulating visual environment
for the staging of the work creates the appearance of “au-
thenticity” in a way that is absent in the Bayanihan tradi-
tion. Theme park environments, because of their apparent
completeness and visual complexity, can easily become a
substitute for reality. In this sense, dance in the Mindanao
village can easily be read by the tourist-spectator as having
a kind of purity that the same dance would lack if it were to
be performed by actual Muslims on the
stage of the Cultural Center of the Phil-
ippines.
TALES FROM MINDANAO
The final dance company under
consideration, the Integrated Perform-
ing Arts Guild (IPAG), is the only group with a significant
domestic and international touring schedule that is com-
prised largely of dancers residing in the south of the coun-
try. Founded in 1978 by Steven P.C. Fernandez and Ligaya
Fernando-Amilbangsa and housed at the Mindanao State
University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT), the
group is a seasoned company of professional dancers who
tell stories using a movement vocabulary based largely on
the pangalay dance idiom. Rather than attempting to posi-
tion the work in a mythical, context-free, or ossified, fictional
past, IPAG uses the concrete features of the form to bring
traditional stories to life in ways that have clear, contempo-
rary relevance for a modern Filipino audience.
What marks IPAG’s encounter with pangalay as differ-
ent from those discussed earlier is its stronger and more
direct link to the indigenous cultures from which the form
springs. The group’s co-founder, Ligaya Fernando-
Amilbangsa, spent 18 years in the Sulu archipelago cata-
loguing and learning pangalay, and is regarded as the
country’s leading expert on the form. Rather than trying to
preserve pangalay as a museum-piece, Amilbangsa has
sought to make adaptations to ensure its survival, while
remaining respectful of the context in which the form was
created.18 The work of IPAG suggests that even though
pangalay is apparently imperiled on its home ground in
largely Muslim areas,19 it may have a future as a gestural and
performance language capable of speaking to a contempo-
rary audience about current political and social realities.
IPAG has been seen extensively in Europe, where their
2002 tour of “Tales from Mindanao: Earth, Wind, Fire and
Water” was staged in four countries and over 20 cities. For
many Europeans, IPAG’s tour was their first significant en-
counter with Filipino culture, and Filipino newspaper ac-
counts took obvious pride in the company’s overseas suc-
cess, describing in detail how the group performed for roy-
alty while in Monaco and garnered a top prize at the 13th
International Folklore Festival in Port Sur Saone, France,
edging out the competition from eleven other countries. While
the Filipino press noted that “the Philippines’ woes, includ-
ing the notoriety of the Abu Sayyaf, were not mentioned”
during the course of the European tour,20 it seems highly
unlikely that European audiences were totally unaware of
47
the Muslim context for the work.
Indeed, when the group performed in Manila prior to
their international tour, no attempt was made to ignore the
ongoing military and political crisis in the south of the coun-
try. Performing before an audience comprised largely of
school age children in the cavernous theater on the campus
of the University of the Philippines in July 2001, company
director Fernandez introduced the group by acknowledging
that for many of the children present, the radical Muslim
group Abu Sayyaf was probably their only association with
Mindanao. The repertoire listed in the
program provided a brief description of
the “neo-ethnic” vignettes and suites
to be performed, while each segment Rather than providing the
was preceded by a brief explanation by fiction of a culturally
Fernandez on the content of the piece. “authentic” performance,
The term “neo-ethnic” suggests that IPAG was offering their
rather than providing the audience with interpretation of traditional
the fiction of a culturally “authentic” stories from the region.
performance, IPAG was instead offer-
ing their interpretation of traditional stories and dance pieces
from the region. By acknowledging Abu Sayyaf at the be-
ginning of the program, Fernandez was also highlighting the
fact that the company was providing the audience with an
alternative to the view of Muslim culture as one dominated
by radical, armed militants battling government forces.
The group’s opening number used traditional dance as
a metaphor for cultural empowerment. Rather than present-
ing dance as an artifact from the past, it was instead offered
as a living, culturally vibrant form with the power to provide
an antidote to the forces of consumerism and Westerniza-
tion. The performance began when the company, clad in
loose-fitting black attire similar to that used in martial arts
traditions, made a dramatic entrance from the back of the
theater. As soon as they reached the stage, a young man
wearing the baggy clothing of a “Sk8er Dude” entered with
a boombox and began a display of street dancing that owed
more to MTV and popular, urban culture than traditional
performance. The onstage dancers then proceeded to show
the street dancing youth how to put on traditional dance
trousers that are gathered and tied in the middle. In a sight
gag, the young man tied the trousers incorrectly and they
fell down, revealing his bright red underwear, much to the
delight of the squealing children in the audience. Gradually,
the young man gained confidence as he copied the dance
movements of the ten traditional dancers onstage with in-
creasing dexterity and skill while the kulintang rather than
the boombox provided the percussive beat for the move-
ment. The young man dared members of the group to ex-
ecute a solo act of dancing virtuosity, a challenge met by
successive dancers, demonstrating that competitive danc-
ing is hardly a new phenomenon.
By leaving behind Western-influenced urban street
dance and connecting viscerally with his cultural heritage,
the young man’s dance progression demonstrates that tra-
ditional art forms can provide an opportunity to rediscover
one’s roots. The ease with which he picked up the new moves
also suggests that an urbanized Filipino youth has a kind of
natural affinity for a traditional movement form that lies just
beneath the skin, waiting to be tapped. The opening se-
48
quence suggests that instead of recreating a fictional past
or creating a false sense of a unified nation, traditional dance
forms such as pangalay are better used as tools for cultural
empowerment. The movements on which pangalay is based
provide a performance vocabulary and mode of expression
that may come from a site that is removed from the dominant,
Catholic culture of the north of the country, but it is still
more thoroughly a product of the Philippines than knock-
offs of break-dancing from the streets of America’s largest
cities. While urban American street dancing can be made
Filipino, IPAG seems to be suggesting
that there is greater value in reclaiming
a tradition that is from the soil of the
country, a dance practice that is liter-
ally in one’s bones.
Perhaps surprisingly, the opening
segments of IPAG’s “Tales from
Mindanao” place conflicts between
Muslims and Christians at the center
of the narrative frame. Three key dance
pieces presented sequentially early in the program seem par-
ticularly noteworthy in this regard. According to the pro-
gram, the first of the trio, “The Legend of Maria Cristina
Falls,” tells the story of “a Rajah’s unbridled lust for one
woman.”21 In performance, the young woman, Maria Cristina,
wearing a Spanish-style dress, is the object of desire by the
Rajah, represented in traditional Muslim court attire, replete
with ceremonial knife or kris. After being pursued and cap-
tured by the Rajah’s men, Maria Cristina escapes and em-
braces death in a slow-motion leap over a waterfall accom-
panied by the mournful lament of a bamboo flute. Dancers
then lift Cristina, a martyr to the Rajah’s uncontrolled lust.
Given the political and military crisis in the south, the
dramatization of a conflict between a sexually rapacious
Muslim male and a Christian woman who chooses an honor-
able death over submission seems shocking indeed. Placing
the piece near the beginning of the program makes its mes-
sage that much more provocative, especially as it appears to
reinforce the myth of the dangerous, Muslim male who views
women as property to be acquired for his pleasure. Were the
story not based on a traditional folk tale, it is hard to imagine
how it might be met by an audience containing a significant
number of Muslims, something that was not the case on a
university campus in Manila. The logic behind the place-
ment of the work only makes sense when seen in the context
of the dialogue it establishes with the two subsequent sto-
ries, both of which are also derived from traditional rather
than modern sources. Collectively, the first three works serve
to interrogate one another, suggesting that Muslims in the
south are more interested in resolving conflict and bridging
cultural and religious differences than the Filipino media
might lead one to believe.
The next dance piece, a Tausug story entitled “Love
and Death at Muddas,” heightens the focus on religious
conflict by enacting a “forbidden affair” between a Christian
soldier and a Tausug woman, a relationship that the program
notes is “strictly taboo by Islamic custom.”22 Perhaps more
shocking than the story itself is the fact that the young
soldier wears what appears to be a contemporary Filipino
military uniform, while the Muslim woman is dressed in tra-
Harvard Asia Quarterly
Summer 2003
ditional formal attire. At the point in the story when it be-
comes clear that the young woman, now pregnant, cannot
leave her culture behind and disobey her sternly authoritar-
ian father, the soldier tries to force her to run away with him
and when rejected, shoots her. As she dies in his arms, one
sees a Christian soldier holding a Muslim woman, a remark-
ably poignant image given that Christian soldiers were track-
ing down Abu Sayyaf in the south at that very time the
performance was taking place.
That the Christian soldier kills the
woman he cannot have rather than
permitting her to return to her own
culture suggests a level of brutality
that matches the selfish impulses of
the rapacious rajah. The soldier’s dis-
respect for traditional Muslim cultural
values and his desire to own the
woman at all costs also mirrors the way
in which aspects of Muslim culture
have been appropriated to serve the
interests of the country’s Christian
majority. The message seems to be that
when a culture cannot be subdued and
acquired, it is better to destroy it rather Tale of the Bird and Fish.
than to let it live. As before, the next
dance number answers this apparent provocation.
The next piece offers what appears to be a kind of third
way, a fable of inter-species cooperation that provides a
possible antidote to the excesses of the lusty Rajah and the
wife-murdering Christian soldier. Inter-species cooperation
is used as a metaphor for an alternate future where religious
and cultural differences can be resolved. “The Tale of the
Bird and the Fish,” adapted from a Maranao folk tale, shows
how the bird and the fish support one another when their
natural environment is threatened by humans. At one point
the bird’s habitat is destroyed by loggers and he falls into
the water where he is rescued by the fish, while later in the
story the bird rescues the fish as it lies baking under the sun.
The moral of the story is clear: even where differences ap-
pear insurmountable, in the face of larger, external forces a
common bond makes cooperation between apparent oppo-
sites essential for survival.
The way that this third dance piece reflects the conflict
evident in the earlier two pieces also suggests that Fernandez
and IPAG are planting the seeds for future cooperation be-
tween all segments of society, while also commenting upon
the environmental devastation that is particularly pervasive
in Mindanao. The island’s vast forest resources have been
significantly depleted by large logging companies that have
leveled ancient forests while failing to return the financial
rewards of that enterprise to the communities most affected
by the loss of their forests. Similarly, the opening of
Mindanao’s considerable gold reserves to foreign mining
operations has resulted in a compromised eco-system in
many areas as the cyanide solution used to extract gold has
leached into the groundwater, killing off plant and animal
life. The so-called “liberalization” of trade enforced by the
World Bank has resulted in a situation where a handful of
foreign corporations, relying on political cronies from out-
side the region, have heaped huge environmental damage
Harvard Asia Quarterly
Summer 2003
on the island over the last decade. “The Tale of the Bird and
the Fish” is very much the story of contemporary Mindanao,
IPAG’s home. In such a world, Christians and Muslims need
to heed the message of this old Maranao story and use their
energies not to maintain the fiction that they are incompat-
ible species, but instead must act in tandem against the ex-
ternal forces that threaten their collective future.
The vastly different uses to which Muslim dance is put
to use in these four sites reflect the
complexities, challenges and contra-
dictions found in the cultural and po-
litical life of the Philippines today. The
most established use of the pangalay
idiom and the one most clearly linked
to the needs of modern statecraft is
found in the example of the Bayanihan
Dance Company, where spectacularly
exotic scenes involving rajahs and
passive female “slaves” became a
standard feature of the company’s
repertory shortly after it was founded
in the 1950s. While the orientalist
tropes of the “exotic east” have been
(IPAG) tamed down somewhat over the suc-
ceeding years, there is still an extent
to which the old Bayanihan model lives on in the sizable
Filipino diaspora, particularly in the United States. The
problematics of the consumption model in an age of global
capitalism and MTV are much in evidence in dinner theater
presentations that borrow the pangalay form; audiences
are left entertained and visually stimulated, but context is
absent. Theme park performances create a total physical
environment for staging the dance, but their very complete-
ness and complexity runs the risk of creating the illusion
that the spectator somehow “knows” the tradition from the
“inside” when in fact the context for the inscription was
carefully controlled and often far removed from its point of
origin. Finally, IPAG provides another model, one that seeks
to use the tradition in a way that respects and acknowledges
its origins, while empowering a second generation of danc-
ers to present traditional stories that speak to the perilous
state of contemporary Filipino life. Thus the future of
pangalay-influenced dance as a living and evolving art form
may be in the hands of groups such as IPAG that have dis-
covered ways to use the characteristic features of the dance
to tell stories with the potential to bridge cultural and reli-
gious differences.
ENDNOTES
1
While the current conflict is largely between government
forces and the radical Muslim organization Abu Sayyaf, rela-
tions between Christians and Muslims in the Philippines have
been troubled since the arrival of Spanish colonizers in the
early 16th Century. Spanish colonization brought the Catholic
Church to the Philippines, creating what remains the only
49
predominantly Catholic country in Asia. Whereas Filipinos about Muslims. Clearly such a setting has little to do with the
throughout much of the rest of the archipelago ultimately reality of village life where these dance traditions were cre-
converted to Catholicism during the era of Spanish rule, ated and performed.
Muslims in the south did not. During the 20th Century the 17
Bharucha, Rustom, The Politics of Cultural Practice:
conflict has been about land and the demand for increased Thinking Through Theater in an Age of Globalization,
autonomy in majority Muslim areas. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 2000, p. 23.
2 18
Gaerlan, Barbara, “In the Court of the Sultan: Orientalism, See Fernando-Amilbangsa’s book, previously cited, for
Nationalism, and Modernity in Philippine and Filipino Ameri- complete documentation of this tradition. See also De Vera,
can Dance, Journal of Asian American Studies 2.3 (1999), Ruel S., previously cited, for information on Fernando-
p.269. Amilbangsa’s contributions to pangalay.
3 19
Steinberg, David Joel, The Philippines: A Singular and a Again, without the opportunity to travel to these regions
Plural Place, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994, p.92. myself, I have had to rely on those who have links to the
4
Hamilton-Patterson, James, America’s Boy: The Marcoses region to reach this conclusion. Fernando-Amilbanga, quoted
and the Philippines, Pasig City, Philippines: Anvil Publish- in the Asiaweek article by De Vera, previously cited, makes
ing, p.342. this point.
5 20
Gaerlan, op. cit., p.271. Godinez-Ortega, Christine, “Iligan Folk Dance Group Wins
6
“Moro National Liberation Front” entry, Encyclopedia Big in France and Monaco,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, 28
Britannica online, <http://www.britannica.com>. This figure October 2002.
21
is also cited by MNLF Leader Nur Misuari in Steinberg, op. Integrated Performing Arts Guild (IPAG) Program for 2001-
cit., p.342. 2002 tour entitled, “Tales from Mindanao: Earth, Wind, Fire
7
Fernandez, Doreen, Palabas: Essays on Philippine The- and Water.”
22
ater, Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, p.64 Ibid.
8
Fernando-Amilbangsa, Ligaya, Pangalay: Traditional
Dances and Related Folk Artistic Expressions, Manila:
Filipinas Foundation, Inc. for the Ministry of Muslim Affairs,
1983, p.36.
9
De Vera, Ruel S., “Learning to Make Waves: A Troupe’s
Quest to Save the Dance of Sulu,” Asiaweek online, 26 May
2000, <http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/magazine/2000/
0526/as.dance.html>.
10
Cultural Center of the Philippines Website <http://
www.culturalcenter.gov.ph>.
11
Gaerlan, op. cit., p.268.
12
Ibid., p.271.
13
Ibid., p.251-287.
14
The Tagalog spelling of “Pilipino” is used in this context
rather than the Spanish-language spelling of “Filipino.” There
is considerable debate over the appropriateness of the use of
“Pilipino” in an English-speaking environment. Generally
speaking, younger Filipino-Americans claim this term to make
a political statement that they will not take on the language of
the colonizer when they define themselves.
15
Balme, Christopher, Decolonizing the Stage: Theatrical
Syncretism and Post-Colonial Drama, Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1999, p.5.
16
In her analysis of a filmed 1962 Bayanihan performance,
Barbara Gaerlan transcribes the narrator’s introduction to a
Muslim dance suite: “As we enter the court of the Sultan, the
sound of the kulintang gong comes to us, as once it came
across the seas, when the great Majapahit spread his empire
from Java to Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago and brought
Mohammedanism and the mysteries of Islam, the life of all
the Orient, of India, of Arabia, of China as well. Our people of
the south are called Moros, and theirs is the dance of the
Orient. . . . As in the Arabian Nights of old, the Sultan is
entertained with ancient tales. For the thousand and first
time, the Sultana performs a dance meant only for the eyes of
the royal family” (op. cit., p.259). Gaerlan argues that this
fictional setting reinforces dominant, orientalist attitudes

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50 Summer 2003