Editorial: Davao's art scene

DAVAO is fast growing, and with it comes the challenge for its art community to come alive. A city without art is a city without soul that is how it is and how it should be.

We do take pride in celebrating our culture during Kadayawan Festival, but culture will be just a yearly festival if the artists don't invest their time and effort to create things visitors and residents alike will love to own.

Of course, we know that Davao has a big pool of artists, but when we are made to name artists who has a continuing and large body of works to show, we can only think of two names - Victor Secuya and Kublai Millan.

For a city this big, and an artist community that can be bigger than Baguio City - what with three large colleges offering fine arts and several other offering communication arts and still more offering architecture, just imagine all those creative minds our city is hosting.

But no one is consistently producing like these two artists.

As every artist knows, his continued existence relies on his portfolio and sustained creation. This then is a challenge to the art community to jumpstart a movement, to keep in stride with Davao's leapfrogging development before artists of other metropolises take recognition of the vast opportunities offered and move in and prosper where our very own would have prospered.

This goes for the performing artists as well.

It was two decades ago when the stage was still enjoying some life here, now we only have the LCB doing much of the work, aside from the dance troupes that continue to grace programs.

This said, there is a need for the community to stimulate interest on this anew so that we can look imbibe the culture that makes us distinct from all others.

The audience during the Liwanag World Festival was treated to dance numbers by the Kaliwat, the Bayanahina Dance Troupe, and even the women of the Talaandig tribe, and there we saw colors and wonderful movements. This brought Siam Niramit in Bangkok to mind. Admittedly, Siam Niramit is a huge production, but the colors and the stories are already here, all it takes is to make a full production out of it. For those who haven't watched Siam Niramit, it's a full-production show of Thailand's Arts and Culture told in story form with dances and music, and yes, a few real live elephants. It plays to near full house every night. Imagine this.