Weekend Report: Something Else

Since my publique demands for a weekend report every Monday, I could not help but post about it. You know me naman, very customer-oriented, di ba?

So here it goes.

Friday evening I went with Maggie Cheung and Bubbles to the Bangkok Arts and Culture Centre (BACC) to check the preview of Thailand's entry to the 53rd International Art Exhibition for the La Biennale di Venezia.

The installation of Thailand is called Gondola al Paradiso (website here), which examines how the country represents and packages its culture and landscape for tourism purposes. The installation is akin to a travel agency and I see it as a critique of the commodification of culture to lure in more visitors bringing much-needed money.

We also happened to catch Hypnosis, a graduate exhibition of the Textile and Fashion Department of the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Thammasat University.

The students' creations mainly feature reconstruction of fabrics and other materals. Placed in a frame, they are veritable artworks.

The top floor of the BACC holds Campaign for Art. The BACC is a result of a ten-year campaign by a network of artists, including protests, marches, and other gatherings.

To commemorate that successful campaign called "We Choose an Art Centre, Not a Shopping Centre", some two thousand pieces of artwork on cloth that were produced during the campaign are now laid down on the cavernous halls of the art center.

The pieces capture the spirit and passion of the artists, along with students, passers-by, and other members of the community, who fought for the establishment of the BACC. It's a very inspiring exhibit that showcases the citizens' strong preference for a temple for art and culture over a temple for consumerism.

Last night, together with Shanghai Tang and a couple of his French friends, I also caught an "experimental performance" that mixes movement, live video, installation art, and theatrical play of B-Floor Theatre, one of Bangkok's most provocative and unconventional theater companies.

The performance is called Something Else, and freewheels into the complexity of human relationships. Five dancers-cum-actors demonstrate how fragile our connections are with people and the dissonance between our self-perception and how others perceive us.

The fusion of different artistic media keeps the performance engaging. However, eighty percent of the lines were in Thai, sans subtitles. Of course I did not understand any of the dialogue so I had to cling on the acting mainly. Fortunately the performers were very, very effective in evoking the message of the material.

So there, that's my weekend.

I also did a bit of drinking last Friday and Saturday with Bubbles, Maggie Cheung, and Neomie Lenoir.

And had my ears checked coz until now I have yet to fully recover from a little ear damage during our diving trip. I discovered that I have allergic rhinitis, which prevented me from properly decompressing. So for now I'm taking medicines to clear my nasal passages.

And oh, a couple of things to look forward to this week:

One, my sister and her Davao friends are dropping by Bangkok. I cannot be more excited to see my sister for the first time since I left Las Islas Filipinas.

Two, I'm flying to Phuket for a few days for something I'm too embarrassed to talk about here. I'd try to win Best in National Costume, ok? I'd show you my crown when I come back. Wink, wink.

Weekend Report: Life as a Musical

Dios mio, it has been a week since my last update pala. Well, well, well, my legendary self-discipline has failed me yet again.

Anyhoot, just to update my dear two readers of the reason why this blog had been unattended the past week, I was in a Southeast Asian meeting on the harmonization of regulatory policies on high heels. Gosh, shoes were flying in all directions, fortunately, I was well protected in my Gareth Pugh armor.

Oh, I also need to mention that I finally met my sister from another mother, Kiel of Life as a Write Up (girl, that header is FIERCE written all over it!). Gosh, it was a delight to be in the presence of such a blogger superstar, who was in a meeting in lovely BangCock.

He and I were in processing mode when we had cocktails in Silom Soi 4 two Sundays ago, while furtively checking the crowd, which was disappointingly unappealing. Oh well.

Anyway, the next day I brought him and his colleague to Khao San (gosh, I have to change my tour program somehow), for some cocktails. We ended up singing songs from Miss Saigon at around midnight after buckets and buckets of Sex on the Beach. Put two drunken Pinoy bayots together and the night would somehow end up as a musical, no?

Gurl, you better bring your ass back to BangCock ASAP.

Moving on... last Friday evening I watched the sensational Milk with Maggie Cheung and Bubbles, afterwards we had drinks at Lang Suan. Fun, fun, fun!!! Went home crawling on the floor (well, not really).

Saturday evening, Maggie Cheung and I watched Vagina Monologues with some French friends (chief of which is Shanghai Tang) in Patravadi Theatre.

Gosh, the BKK version was nearly a travesty of the classic play. It was good in a few parts but it was generally amateurish. Ugh. A decent theater scene in this city would be much appreciated.

From Patravadi, we took a cab to a far away bar in Bangna (or sowhere around that area). My friend Shanghai Tang has been telling me about this bar since forever but it was only last weekend that I finally had the chance to go with them, where we ended up with a mostly French group.

And it was a long cab ride that's worth it. I like the relaxed atmosphere of the place and at last I actually liked the Thai band playing a mix of jazz and rock. The interior also has a cool, vintage feel of found objects, old furniture, and mostly random stuff.

Oh, my camera broke last week and so I hardly have any pictures this weekend. Thanks to Maggie Cheung for all the pictures in this post. Fierce!

And lastly, I have a few things to look forward to this week and beyond (choz)!

The wildly popular Las Tres Estrellas are coming to BangCock and will stay here for a week. You can only guess what kind kabaklaan we will spread around the city. A full report is in order.

Also, I'm meeting my classmate from the university, Charina Chuchubelles, and this would be her third time to (somehow) visit me in BangCock.

Lastly, I have a diving trip to the Gulf of Thailand next week with Maggie Cheung and Neomie Lenoir! I cannot wait!!! Note to self: don't forget to pack your ovaries.

And uhmmm, that's all.

The Familiy on Stage

As mentioned in a previous post, I watched a performance of the Virgin Labfest 3 last Friday. As one of the blogs that I check everyday, Gibbs Cadiz announced last week that he was giving away free tickets to the Labfest. The catch though is that anyone who avails it would have to write about the plays in his/her blog. I quickly emailed Gibbs (a million thanks to you) and a day later I met him outside the CCP for the set called Madradramang Pamilya.

First, I have no idea why I'm even daring to write a "review" of the plays we watched. I'm not a theater fanatic although I've seen quite a number of them back in college because the teacher required us to do so. Once I watched a play called Ming Ming in Davao, and that was the only time I watched theater on my own accord.

When I moved back to Manila I often wanted to watch the fare offered by the theater groups here. But always I find them too expensive or that they're always performed in some theater that were simply out of my way.

So when free tickets to the Labfest became available, and anyway the CCP is just an FX ride away from Diliman, I quickly grabbed the opportunity.

All of my comments here are definitely the most pedestrian things said about theater. I badly need enlightenment on these things so any comment is welcome.

The first piece, called Bagahe, was set mostly in the US and explored the relationship of a mother and her son, who were at odds over the Nanay's plan to bury her husband in the Philippines. The two characters were engaged in an endless argument, mainly showing clash of values between two people from different generations. The story's nothing new: the haughty son who made it big and now imposes on his equally impertinent mom. (It does not help that the performance of the actor portraying the son was robotic at best.) Several times I nearly dozed off. To keep me awake, I eavesdropped on my seatmates who were incessantly gasping over the long, gray hair of the actress.

The second piece Looking for Darna took a peek at the life of three generations of Filipinas (the lola, mom, and daughter) living in the US. The grandmother was fast slipping into dementia and she had recurring nightmares of her harrowing experience with rape during the war. The rebellious daughter, on the other hand, was undergoing some sexual awakening of her own and was raped (or was she?) by her boyfriend in the process. (Meanwhile, the mom shrieks the entire time.) Although they did not exactly know how their experiences mirror each other, the lola and the granddaughter (who each gave engaging performances, btw), created an extraordinary bond between them. I loved this piece over the others for its originality and inventiveness.

To cap the evening's lineup was a comedy titled Teroristang Labandera. This one is about a Filipino-Chinese family whose lives seem to be dominated by a chain-smoking labandera. It's like an inverted war of the classes, albeit rowdier, which was actually the best way to perk up the audience after a couple of relatively depressing pieces. I did not like all the squealing at first (add to that the fact that I don't like comedies to begin with). But I realized that the story's more about the materialism that gnaws the family. Ironically, their collective materialism served as their bond. However, the same was used by the labandera to take a firmer hold on them.

After several years, it was exciting to watch plays once again. I love the intimacy theater affords to the audience and the actors. I'm also thrilled about the outlandish stories that only theater dares to tell. I definitely want some more.

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.)