Front Row

My sister and I were lucky to get complimentary tickets to a show of the Ballet Philippines (BP) at the Cultural Center last Saturday evening. Her boyfriend, Don, pulled a few strings with our friends who are members of the company. Lots of thanks to Don for his CCP connections, a thing that has served us quite well for other BP shows in the past.
This time though we were on fucking front row!!! My sister and I could not believe our luck. We realized however that the view is not too good as it sounds. The stage was too huge and high we needed to extend our necks the whole time to see the dancers.

The show was called España Extension, thus it was obviously infused with Spanish music and dances. Our friend Kare (pictured with my sister) had a 30-minute piece from Carmen, and by golly, that darling can act! I realized how ballet does not only involve dancing but humongous amounts of characterization as well. When we talked to her after the performance, Kare revealed that she was dancing with a sprain on her right ankle. Pero performance level pa rin ang lola mo! The male principal dancer of BP is her boyfriend, Biag, who performed a solo of a popular Spanish folk song called Kukuro-kuku or something about la paloma (dove).

Members of a local flamenco school were guest performers. We love flamenco, don't we? Those men in tight, high-waisted pants. The male dancers were not interesting in that case though, but they worked it. Fierce, fierce, fierce!

Among the BP pieces for that show, the last two ones were my favorites. And those were really long pieces, about twenty minutes each. I loved the costume in their last piece where they look like nurses inspired by Jackie O (as seen in the photo at the left). Over dinner last night, Biag told us that it took them only two months to prepare for the show. Quite amazing, isn't it?

My sister and I were pestering Biag for some details of BP's summer dance workshop. We are both frustrated dancers apparently. Biag said he would be teaching a class on Elementary Modern Dance. If all things push through, I might be wearing some tight shorts, sweating it out at the CCP this summer. I so can't wait for the recital! Hahaha. (But really, I can't decide yet whether I should take dancing or advance swimming this summer.)