HCSB celebrates a milestone
The multi-awarded Halili-Cruz School of Ballet (HCSB) recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, and fittingly given a tribute performance was its founder and artistic director, Shirley Halili-Cruz for her enduring passion and dedication to her craft.
The tribute highlighted Summer Dance Divertissement 2015, recital of the HCSB summer workshoppers. The three-part event showcasing the diligence, passion, discipline of almost 400 students was staged at the Newport Performing Arts Theater of Resorts World Manila.
HCSB did not earn the Aliw Awards Hall of Famer for Best Ballet Company in the Philippines and the Most Outstanding Ballet School in Asia by Who’s Who in the Philippines Awards for nothing. Credit goes to the founder-artistic director, who steered the school towards artistic excellence and unmatched success; and the equally passionate and competent teachers who are protégées of Halili-Cruz — Grace Garalde-Perez, Anna Kathrina Halili Cruz and Anna Tuazon-Balmadrid.
Halili-Cruz, a ballerina and ballet teacher from the young age of 15, recalled how her seed of a dream for a ballet school materialized into the Halili-Cruz School of Ballet today, recognized here and abroad with awards after awards. It’s been three decades since she and her sister Zenaida “Jeng” Halili founded HCSB, guided by her strong principle that “sharing a child’s dream is one thing, making it come true is another. That is why the Halili-Cruz School of Ballet exists.”
The ballet school was built in 1985. “Thirty years and we’re still here to touch lives, to transform little awkward cygnets into elegant and graceful swans. We have pirouetted down history as an institution fervently dedicated to the art of dancing,” said the former ballerina.
For winning in various dance competitions abroad like the Dance Excellence in Los Angeles, CA; the Asia Pacific Dance Competition in Bangkok, and other competitions in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore, the HCSB has consistently been among the Dangal Ng Ani awardees of the National Commission on Arts and Culture.