On the 120th anniversary of the founding of Rizal’s La Liga Filipina (July 3, 1982 to July 3, 2012) and on the day that we were freed from American dominion (July 4, 1946), let us remember how the Liga was carefully thought out by Rizal when he saw that the Propaganda Movement in Spain was in vain. An ingenious plan of building a Filipino civic organization, the first of its kind in the country, Rizal saw Liga as creating a distinct ‘Filipino’ nation in the hearts and minds of his countrymen within the social milieu of the Spanish rule. A nation within a Spanish colony. It is thus a fulfillment of a statement Rizal made when he said: “If our countrymen are counting on us here in Europe, they are very much mistaken…The battlefield is the Philippines…there we will help one another, there together we will suffer or triumph perhaps. The majority of our compatriots in Europe are afraid…they are brave only so long as they are in a peaceful country! The Philippines should not count on them; she should depend on her own strength.” We wonder how Rizal thought of constructing what is to be the Filipino nation? How do we build a country from the ground up? We are fortunate to have the main objectives of the La Liga Filipina recorded in our history. This is, shall I say, a primer to — How2BuildaNation101: 1. To unite the whole archipelago into one vigorous and homogenous community; 2. Mutual protection in every want and necessity; 3. Defense against all violence and injustice; 4. Encouragement of instruction, agriculture, and commerce; and 5. Study the application of reforms As we can see, Rizal never saw nationalism as an end in itself. Leon Ma. Guerrero writes, “Rizal’s concept of a nation, as we should remind ourselves on occasion, was moral, unselfish, responsible, based uncompromisingly on a general recognition of mutual rights and duties… He never confused national independence with individual and social freedom.” (italics mine)
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On the 120th anniversary of the founding of Rizal’s La Liga Filipina (July 3, 1982 to July 3, 2012) and on the day that we were freed from American dominion (July 4, 1946), let us remember how the Liga was carefully thought out by Rizal when he saw that the Propaganda Movement in Spain was in vain. An ingenious plan of building a Filipino civic organization, the first of its kind in the country, Rizal saw Liga as creating a distinct ‘Filipino’ nation in the hearts and minds of his countrymen within the social milieu of the Spanish rule. A nation within a Spanish colony. It is thus a fulfillment of a statement Rizal made when he said:

“If our countrymen are counting on us here in Europe, they are very much mistaken…The battlefield is the Philippines…there we will help one another, there together we will suffer or triumph perhaps. The majority of our compatriots in Europe are afraid…they are brave only so long as they are in a peaceful country! The Philippines should not count on them; she should depend on her own strength.”

We wonder how Rizal thought of constructing what is to be the Filipino nation? How do we build a country from the ground up? We are fortunate to have the main objectives of the La Liga Filipina recorded in our history. This is, shall I say, a primer to — How2BuildaNation101:

1. To unite the whole archipelago into one vigorous and homogenous community;

2. Mutual protection in every want and necessity;

3. Defense against all violence and injustice;

4. Encouragement of instruction, agriculture, and commerce; and

5. Study the application of reforms

As we can see, Rizal never saw nationalism as an end in itself. Leon Ma. Guerrero writes, “Rizal’s concept of a nation, as we should remind ourselves on occasion, was moral, unselfish, responsible, based uncompromisingly on a general recognition of mutual rights and duties… He never confused national independence with individual and social freedom.” (italics mine)

Ballet Philippines’ Crisostomo Ibarra: A Dance of Characters (An IndioHistorian Review)The lights dimmed at the theater. The live music began playing and then a black figure emerges from the bare stage with just a few seats lined up at the center. The figure is a man in black coat and hat. He sits, removes the cap on his head. He moves his arms in a wave-like motion together with the playing cello, violin, bassoon and piano. And then he dances as he tells the story. This was after all Ballet Philippines’ Crisostomo Ibarra. I have to tell you a historian’s secret. I watched it twice.The last salvo of Ballet Philippines’ Crisostomo Ibarra last Sunday at the Cultural Center of the Philippines was finally over. A fresh take on the novel Noli Me Tangere, the show was perhaps greater than what it was given credit for. Noli Me Tangere, together with El Filibusterismo, the two seminal novels of the Filipino thinker and national hero Jose Rizal, were catalysts of a grassroot revolution in the Philippines in 1896—what was to be the first national-in-scale revolutionary movement in Asia against a colonial power. Such novels that change the terrain of history and pave the way for a nation to be born are definitely in the same league as that of Victor Hugo, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Dante. There have been many renditions of the Noli, from films to musicals to pay tribute to the hero and to his lasting legacy. But what Ballet Philippines did was daring, reinterpreting Noli’s narrative with fresh new eyes through ballet.I watched together with my family, as the first homecoming performance of Candice Adea and JM Cordero, highly-acclaimed ballet dancers since their winning performance at Helsinki, performed their roles as Maria Clara and Crisostomo Ibarra. (In case you don’t know, Candice Adea won 1st place at the Senior’s Women Division at the recently conducted Helsinki International Ballet Competition 2012, the olympics of ballet as many call it. Lisa Macuja just achieved silver during her time.). What a fitting end to the year-long celebration of Rizal’s Sesquicentennial! Accompanied by musicians from the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, the show was spectacular from beginning to end. The whole ballet performance was divided into 8 scenes. Before each scene was a flash on the screen of a single Filipino word, and a short description of the story. When Paul Morales, Libretto and Choreographer of the show, said that they were going to tell the story through dance, I thought I knew what that was all about. When I saw it myself, I was speechless. There were scenes that really welled my eyes with tears… facial expressions, the graceful moves of Maria Clara, the confused expression and dance that depict the psychological turmoil of Crisostomo Ibarra. What made it tinge the heart was scene 7, entitled “Halik” (The Kiss), when Ibarra, on the run from the guardia sibil visits Maria Clara at night for the last time, where Maria Clara tells him of her real father and her betrayal of her love. The forgiveness of Ibarra, the kiss, and their forced parting, the music and the dance, were just so full. After that scene, you could hear sniffs and see tears from the audience. My mom, who never attended a ballet show until that Sunday, was also in tears. There is something about the story through dance and the emotion it brings that transcends, despite having no dialogues in the said performance. Perhaps that’s what’s so special about this rendition of Noli. We have become so used to loads of words from some inaccurate translations of Noli and Fili textbooks that we forget that these characters, in their very predicament and reaction in the story, are closer to us than we think. I was filled with pity for Sisa… for Crisostomo, and for Maria Clara. I realized that these raw human experiences of Filipinos in the late 19th century was what sparked the Revolution that began the birth pains of the Philippines. The performance was indeed a masterpiece.  However, unknown to everyone, these dancers would hav put their financial lifeline on the line if need be, even without government support, just so that they could compete in the international arena and give honor to our country. Yes, that’s the real story behind our ballet dancers in a country of novelty noon-time TV shows. That is why watching our Filipino ballet dancers dance on stage is such a great privilege. Jed Balsamo, the man behind the wonderful music of the show, told us that the show may never be repeated again. I bought a soundtrack just in case.  I give the whole performance 5 out of 5 stars for a great show. Praying for a sequel. Simoun perhaps? *Photo above: BP’s Earl John Arisola as Crisostomo and Katherine Trofeo as Maria Clara.
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Ballet Philippines’ Crisostomo Ibarra: A Dance of Characters (An IndioHistorian Review)

The lights dimmed at the theater. The live music began playing and then a black figure emerges from the bare stage with just a few seats lined up at the center. The figure is a man in black coat and hat. He sits, removes the cap on his head. He moves his arms in a wave-like motion together with the playing cello, violin, bassoon and piano. And then he dances as he tells the story. This was after all Ballet Philippines’ Crisostomo Ibarra. I have to tell you a historian’s secret. I watched it twice.

The last salvo of Ballet Philippines’ Crisostomo Ibarra last Sunday at the Cultural Center of the Philippines was finally over. A fresh take on the novel Noli Me Tangere, the show was perhaps greater than what it was given credit for. Noli Me Tangere, together with El Filibusterismo, the two seminal novels of the Filipino thinker and national hero Jose Rizal, were catalysts of a grassroot revolution in the Philippines in 1896—what was to be the first national-in-scale revolutionary movement in Asia against a colonial power. Such novels that change the terrain of history and pave the way for a nation to be born are definitely in the same league as that of Victor Hugo, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Dante. There have been many renditions of the Noli, from films to musicals to pay tribute to the hero and to his lasting legacy. But what Ballet Philippines did was daring, reinterpreting Noli’s narrative with fresh new eyes through ballet.

I watched together with my family, as the first homecoming performance of Candice Adea and JM Cordero, highly-acclaimed ballet dancers since their winning performance at Helsinki, performed their roles as Maria Clara and Crisostomo Ibarra. (In case you don’t know, Candice Adea won 1st place at the Senior’s Women Division at the recently conducted Helsinki International Ballet Competition 2012, the olympics of ballet as many call it. Lisa Macuja just achieved silver during her time.). What a fitting end to the year-long celebration of Rizal’s Sesquicentennial!

Accompanied by musicians from the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, the show was spectacular from beginning to end.

The whole ballet performance was divided into 8 scenes. Before each scene was a flash on the screen of a single Filipino word, and a short description of the story. When Paul Morales, Libretto and Choreographer of the show, said that they were going to tell the story through dance, I thought I knew what that was all about. When I saw it myself, I was speechless. There were scenes that really welled my eyes with tears… facial expressions, the graceful moves of Maria Clara, the confused expression and dance that depict the psychological turmoil of Crisostomo Ibarra. What made it tinge the heart was scene 7, entitled “Halik” (The Kiss), when Ibarra, on the run from the guardia sibil visits Maria Clara at night for the last time, where Maria Clara tells him of her real father and her betrayal of her love. The forgiveness of Ibarra, the kiss, and their forced parting, the music and the dance, were just so full. After that scene, you could hear sniffs and see tears from the audience. My mom, who never attended a ballet show until that Sunday, was also in tears.

There is something about the story through dance and the emotion it brings that transcends, despite having no dialogues in the said performance. Perhaps that’s what’s so special about this rendition of Noli. We have become so used to loads of words from some inaccurate translations of Noli and Fili textbooks that we forget that these characters, in their very predicament and reaction in the story, are closer to us than we think. I was filled with pity for Sisa… for Crisostomo, and for Maria Clara. I realized that these raw human experiences of Filipinos in the late 19th century was what sparked the Revolution that began the birth pains of the Philippines. The performance was indeed a masterpiece. 

However, unknown to everyone, these dancers would hav put their financial lifeline on the line if need be, even without government support, just so that they could compete in the international arena and give honor to our country. Yes, that’s the real story behind our ballet dancers in a country of novelty noon-time TV shows. That is why watching our Filipino ballet dancers dance on stage is such a great privilege.

Jed Balsamo, the man behind the wonderful music of the show, told us that the show may never be repeated again. I bought a soundtrack just in case. 

I give the whole performance 5 out of 5 stars for a great show. Praying for a sequel. Simoun perhaps?

*Photo above: BP’s Earl John Arisola as Crisostomo and Katherine Trofeo as Maria Clara.

We Filipinos are all familiar with how one night in Calamba, Laguna, Dona Teodora Alonzo taught the story of “The Foolish Moth” from a children’s book El Amigo de los Ninos to the young Rizal. The story goes that there was once a young moth who was attracted to the flame of an oil-lamp. The mother moth had warned him that to go near it was to endanger his own life. But the young moth would not listen. He got nearer and nearer the light, not heeding his mother’s advice, until the young moth was engulfed in flame… to his death. But an adult Rizal wrote later on how he took in that children’s poem: “My mother repeated her warning, but, how curious, the light seemed to me more beautiful, the flame more attractive. I envied the fate of the insects. They frolicked so joyously in the enchanting splendor that their falling into the oil-lamp didn’t cause me any dread. The flame now rolled its golden tongue and caught a moth that fluttered. and was still. That seemed to me a great event. It stirred my emotion. My mother’s voice sounded strange and uncanny. I did not notice it when the fable ended. My attention was fixed on the fate of the moth. I watched with my whole soul. It had died a martyr to its dream…How many years have elapsed since then; the child has become a man who has crossed the seas and all the oceans. From experience he has received bitter lessons—oh, infinitely more bitter than the sweet lesson his mother gave him! Nevertheless he preserves the heart of a child: he believes that light is the most beautiful thing there is in creation and worthy enough for a man to sacrifice his life for it!” (Italics mine) Our life is not our own. There is nothing like gazing at the beauty of the Light and to give it to our people, even if it costs us everything.  Happy 151st Birthday, Jose Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonzo Realonda!!! *Photo of Rizal as a young painter at Casa Tomasina, dated 1879.
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We Filipinos are all familiar with how one night in Calamba, Laguna, Dona Teodora Alonzo taught the story of “The Foolish Moth” from a children’s book El Amigo de los Ninos to the young Rizal. The story goes that there was once a young moth who was attracted to the flame of an oil-lamp. The mother moth had warned him that to go near it was to endanger his own life. But the young moth would not listen. He got nearer and nearer the light, not heeding his mother’s advice, until the young moth was engulfed in flame… to his death.

But an adult Rizal wrote later on how he took in that children’s poem:

“My mother repeated her warning, but, how curious, the light seemed to me more beautiful, the flame more attractive. I envied the fate of the insects. They frolicked so joyously in the enchanting splendor that their falling into the oil-lamp didn’t cause me any dread. The flame now rolled its golden tongue and caught a moth that fluttered. and was still.

That seemed to me a great event. It stirred my emotion.

My mother’s voice sounded strange and uncanny. I did not notice it when the fable ended. My attention was fixed on the fate of the moth. I watched with my whole soul. It had died a martyr to its dream…How many years have elapsed since then; the child has become a man who has crossed the seas and all the oceans. From experience he has received bitter lessons—oh, infinitely more bitter than the sweet lesson his mother gave him! Nevertheless he preserves the heart of a child: he believes that light is the most beautiful thing there is in creation and worthy enough for a man to sacrifice his life for it!” (Italics mine)

Our life is not our own. There is nothing like gazing at the beauty of the Light and to give it to our people, even if it costs us everything. 

Happy 151st Birthday, Jose Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonzo Realonda!!!

*Photo of Rizal as a young painter at Casa Tomasina, dated 1879.

The Order of the Knights of Rizal will be launching its social media viral marketing #JustlikeRizal tonight, the eve of Rizal’s 151st birthday. I was personally invited by KOR’s Deputy Supreme Exchequer, thanks to friends who happened to be historians too. They are inviting all bloggers and Filipino social media to take part in the campaign to spread Rizal’s legacy to the four corners of the globe. Extending this invitation to all Filipino bloggers who feel strongly about the ideals of Rizal like I do. :) Venue will be at the Manila Yacht Club at 6pm tonight (not at the KOR HQ). Ok. I’m now giddy excited. And for those who have flooded my facebook with greetings, maraming maraming salamat! I still wonder why God would put my birthday next to Rizal’s. :)
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The Order of the Knights of Rizal will be launching its social media viral marketing #JustlikeRizal tonight, the eve of Rizal’s 151st birthday. I was personally invited by KOR’s Deputy Supreme Exchequer, thanks to friends who happened to be historians too. They are inviting all bloggers and Filipino social media to take part in the campaign to spread Rizal’s legacy to the four corners of the globe. Extending this invitation to all Filipino bloggers who feel strongly about the ideals of Rizal like I do. :)

Venue will be at the Manila Yacht Club at 6pm tonight (not at the KOR HQ). Ok. I’m now giddy excited.

And for those who have flooded my facebook with greetings, maraming maraming salamat! I still wonder why God would put my birthday next to Rizal’s. :)