The
Cultural Center of the Philippines, CCP Building, CCP Complex, Roxas Boulevard, Pasay City (tel: (02) 832 1125; website:
www.culturalcenter.gov.ph), is as the name implies, the central repository of Philippine culture. It was a pet project of Imelda Marcos, featuring mostly high-brow art, until the EDSA Revolution, when the new administration began to widen the establishment’s mandate to embrace folk and local cultural traditions that included weaving, indigenous music and local theater.
Music: The
Philippine Philharmonic
Orchestra (tel: (02) 832 1120), resident company of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (see above), is the chief classical ensemble. The
Philippine Chamber Choir has grown to a choral force of considerable stature. Open-air classical recitals are particularly popular, taking place within Intramuros, in Paco Park or at
Rizal Park Amphitheater, in Rizal Park (tel: (02) 535 3353).
Theater: The theater companies to watch for are PETA, Tanghalang Pilipino and Repertory Philippines.
PETA (Philippine Educational Theater Association) (tel: (02) 725 6244; website:
www.petatheater.com) is home to the finest local theater artists in the country. These artists have collaborated with various other theater groups all over the world. They produce critically acclaimed original scripts and occasionally feature local versions of foreign plays. Performances take place at the
PETA Theater Center, 5 Eymard Drive.
Tanghalang Pilipino (tel: (02) 832 1125; website:
www.tanghalangpilipino.com) is the official theater company of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (see above), and also produces original scripts.
Repertory Philippines (tel: (02) 887 0710; website:
www.repertory-philippines.com) is the broadway copycat, drawing most of its material from Broadway and West End musicals and plays. These are all performed in English, complete with American and British accents. Many of the lead performers in
Miss Saigon and
Les Miserables in the USA and Europe came from Repertory Philippines, PETA and Tanghalang Pilipino. The company performs at
OnStage, 2/F Greenbelt 1, Ayala Center, Makati City.
Dance: With dance featuring highly in many of the Philippines’ cultural traditions, it is no surprise that ballet and performance arts are one of the major cultural exports.
Ballet Philippines (tel: (02) 832 6011; website:
www.ballet.com.ph) is the top national troupe for classical and modern repertoire and interpretations of local traditions. Ballet Philippines, the
Philippine Ballet Theater and the
Bayanihan Philippine National Folk Dance Company are all resident at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (see above). The
Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group (tel: (02) 831 0894) is also resident and is a major exponent of traditional dance.
Film: The Philippines’ flagging film industry is a far cry from its heyday in the 1980s, when Filipinos landed in the
Guinness Book of Records as the largest movie-going public. Today, the industry is suffering from an onslaught of Hollywood movies, piracy and lack of innovation from profit-minded producers. Ironically, the country is home to several outsourcing firms that do contract animation and rendering for big Hollywood outfits.
An unexpected offshoot of the stagnation is that it has opened the door for independent filmmakers who take advantage of cheaper video technology to produce their own movies. This has given rise to an alternative digital film industry, which has lately ridden on the waves of Asian horror films. A local scare film titled
Sigaw has been remade in Hollywood (2008), an indication perhaps of the ingenuity and artistry of Filipinos. (The US version is entitled
The Echo).
Francis Ford Coppola’s
Apocalypse Now (1979) was shot in the Philippines, with Marcos furnishing the helicopters for the famous ’Ride of the Valkyries’ air cavalry charge. Less well known is the fact that Peter Weir’s
The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) used Manila to shoot scenes supposed to take place in Jakarta.
Major cinemas in Manila include
Ayala Cinemas, Fifth Floor, Glorietta 4, Ayala Center, Makati City (tel: (02) 752 7883; website:
www.sureseats.com),
Greenhills Promenade, Greenhills Shopping Complex, Ortigas Avenue, Greenhills, San Juan (tel: (02) 722 4496) and
Megamall, EDSA, corner of Julia Vargas Avenue, Mandaluyong City (tel: (02) 633 1901).
Literary Notes: National hero José Rizal wrote the acerbic
Noli Me Tangere or
Touch Me Not (1887) in Spanish when he was only 25. This novel is an incisive commentary into the abuses of friars during the Spanish colonialism. The novel is made all the more remarkable because it was written with bubbling wit, contrasting the lightheaded trifles of the abusive friars with the heavy burden of the oppressed lower classes. The crispness of Rizal’s prose has been compared to the sharp writing of Mark Twain, who was his contemporary. This novel was followed by
El Filibusterismo or
Subversion (1891) and both novels helped raise awareness and resistance against the Spanish invaders.
Foreign writers have contributed some of the best recent interpretations of Manila. James Hamilton-Paterson published
Ghosts of Manila (1994), a tale of horrible goings-on in the twilight of the Marcos era, thinly fictionalised from real events. Cyberpunk writer Neal Stephenson set his novel
Cryptonomicon in Manila and Luzon, where Americans team up with Filipinos to hunt for hidden Japanese gold.
James Fenton showed up in Manila for the last act of the Marcos soap opera - his memoir,
The Snap Revolution (1986), captures the occasion, albeit from an arguably patronising and leftist perspective.
Corazon Aquino and the Brushfire Revolution (1995), by Robert Reid and Eileen Guerrero, interprets the events differently but also with a jaded eye.
William Boyd used Manila in 1902 as the backdrop for his
The Blue Afternoon (1997), while Timothy Mo’s
Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard (1995) makes a great play of Manila’s once notorious electricity outages, weaving them with more than a whiff of scatology.
A Short History of the Philippines (1969), by Teodoro Agoncillo, is probably the best work to cover its brief.
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