Philippine Folk dances

We went to my nephew’s school since they had practice for their folk dance. There are supposed to be 8 of them (4 girls and 4 boys) but only 3 girls were around when we came and it was the mother of one of the girls who was teaching them to dance the carinosa. He did not want to dance at first since he was the only boy around but when his mom asked him to join he did. My nephew is in grade II and I could not help myself from smiling as I see him dance. He was awkward but he did his best to follow the steps and he could actually follow and he was better than the other boy who came later. His awkwardness was actually cute. And as I watch them dancing I was telling my sister that folk dancing should be part of all our school’s curriculum. You get to appreciate a lot of our culture from the dance and the more so if you know the history of each dance.

Such thought made me decide to compile some Philippine folk dances. Just getting them and watching from the ‘net (plus a hangover of our group’s winning the folk dance contest yesterday) affirmed my desire to have the dances taught in all our school. Here are some of the dances I found on the ‘net:

Cariñosa




Pandango sa ilaw




Itik-Itik




Tinikling




Kuratsa




Singkil




Maglalatik




And thinking back, I remembered that I went on vacation to the province on the enrollment for my first year second semester in college and my father enrolled for me (it was easy since I was in a block section) and he got Philippine folk dance for my PE. As part of the Final exam, we had to do a complete folk dance routine... I could not remember the dance anymore but it was definitely NOT the maglalatik..hehehe... Anyway after our performance our instructor called me and I got scared wondering what i did wrong... I knew I was playful while doing the routine but I did not think there was something wrong with it.

Anyway, I came to her with my heart pounding and when I heard the words came out of her mouth, I laughed (well not a loud one but more inside laugh). She asked if I wanted to join our school dance troupe! Geez, I said NO of course but I guess she felt my joy while dancing. And I really think several of our folk dances are great and should be taught.