CONTEMPORARY DANCE FESTIVAL BIDS FAREWELL
THE WiFi Body Festival, the contemporary dance event established by the Cultural Center of the Philippines ( CCP) to showcase new and innovative choreographic works, is happening from July 18 to 20.
After seven years, the dance festival bids farewell at Tanghalang Huseng Batute, Bulwagang Amado Hernandez and the Tanghalang Manuel Conde of CCP. It promises to feature the best of Philippine contemporary dance.
Taking the theme of “Engage”, the festival takes a look back at its accomplishments and what it has become. Participating choreographers look back on their practice and create new work based on this reflexive assessment, and in the process locating their practice in society.
Emerging choreographers who have been accepted into this year’s New Choreographers Competition, one of the highlights of the Festival, are encouraged to address the progress of contemporary dance practice in their own work.
Festival founder and director Myra Beltran said that the CCP intends to continue the choreographers competition after the festival has ended, for which she is glad as it will continue to develop our young choreographers.
The 7th WiFi Body Festival will feature two works that gained international exposure, bringing them back for the Philippine audience to see. These works pay a fitting homage to the basic reason for the first WiFi Body Festival, and testament to its growth and the growth of the dancers and choreographers who have experienced it firsthand. Rhosam Prudenciado Jr., 2008 second placer and grand prize winner of the Yokohama Dance Collection R 2009, opens the festival with
a collaboration with 2007 WiFi finalist Mia Cabalfin, which premiered at the Kyoto Arts Center Dance Program in Japan in 2012.
Eisa Jocson’s will also be featured. which premiered in Vienna and toured internationally, gained notoriety for its theme of a female dancer portraying a male macho dancer, pushing issues of sex as social capital and gendering.
Several former competitors are featured in the IndepenDance Lab platforms that showcase contemporary choreographers’ ongoing creativity and practice. Performing are Christine Crame, who won the audience award in 2008, 2007 third placer Herbert Alvarez, finalists Rudolph Segundo, (2007), Jed Amihan and Chantal Primero (2008), and Mark Rosaroso (2012), 2009 audience awardee and 2nd placer Zyda Marie Baaya, 2012 audience awardee and 2nd placer Sarah Maria Samaniego, and 2012 winner Al Bernard Garcia.