SESSIONS -
PAPER
The Rise of Pangalay and the Pedagogy of Ligaya Fernando-Amilbangsa
Matthew Constancio Maglana Santamaria, PHILIPPINES
Pangalay is a Southern Philippine traditional dance form that is currently enjoying much popularity as reflected in the repertoires of major Philippine dance groups and in entries of video-sharing sites such as the YouTube. In this paper, I argue that pangalay’s vitality and wide spread popularity can mainly be attributed to the works of dance researcher and choreographer Ligaya Fernando-Amilbangsa. Amilbangsa’s contribution to Philippine dance can be seen in three areas: research that she conducted in the field in the 60s and 70s, her own performance as well as that of the three major dance companies that she established, and pedagogy through the Amilbangsa Dance Instruction Method (ADIM) that she devised. This paper attempts to illustrate popularization via Amilbangsa’s three-prong approach to cultural advocacy. It therefore underscores the importance of multi-disciplinary and multi-practice approaches to cultural “preservation” and creation. Also, it links successes in dance and dancing to knowledge production.
The first part of the paper describes the pangalay, its embeddedness in the lives of the peoples of the Sulu Archipelago and illustrates its current level of popularity via a survey of the repertoires of the top Philippine folk dance companies and articles or entries in popular media. The second part briefly narrates Ligaya Fernando-Amilbangsa’s life, encounter and involvement with the pangalay. The third part locates Amilbangsa in Philippine dance research, performance and pedagogy putting emphasis on how her works in each area led to the popularization of the genre. Her seminal work “Pangalay: Traditional dance and Related Folk Artistic Expressions of the Sulu Archipelago,” her establishment of the Tabuli Dance troupe of Tawi-Tawi, the Iligan Performance Arts Guild of Misamis, and the Alun-Alun Dance Circle of Manila, and her construction of the Amilbangsa Dance Instruction Method will be discussed in this part. The final part draws lessons from the Amilbangsa experience as well as from her philosophy of “creative preservation” (preservation through creation).
Note: The presenter wishes to show a 5-minute excerpt of a documentary video on the Amilbangsa and the pangalay dance tradition.
Matthew Constancio Maglana Santamaria, Ph.D. (Kyoto University),
Associate Professor of Asian and Philippine Studies,
Asian Center, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines
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