Friday, March 30, 2007 Sinews of Syllables: A Poetry Night By John Bengan
ON FEBRUARY 15, four days after Sylvia Plath's death anniversary, UP-Mindanao's BA English (Creative Writing) program held its biggest performance poetry act in campus.
Sinews of Syllables -- a suite of poetry readings set to music and movement -- was a collaboration of CW students -- freshmen to seniors -- supported by the program's core faculty with the special participation of selected UP Mindanao Bayla Vinta dancers.
The show was the program's main event, celebrating the UP Mindanao 12th Anniversary and the National Arts Month.
Bringing together nine pieces, the student performers gave interpretations that varied from contemporary dance, dramatic monologue, to punk rock slam; all the poems recited from memory.
Faculty members selected poems to be performed, some of which later set to contemporary music and dance routines, with a team of students inserting extemporized images that were later projected onstage as a performance went on.
Other than poems from Modern favorites like cummings and Sexton, Sinews of Syllables featured Cebuano poetry of Adonis Durado's and Corazon Almerino's caliber.
Meanwhile, a pair of students, hidden in half-light, delivered a lyric poem by Cesar Ruiz Aquino in the manner of a round-song.
The evening began with incantation. Alejandro Abadilla's "Ako And Daigdig" was the opening mantra to the Bayla Vinta dancers' contemporary routine, entrancing the packed CHSS Audio Visual Room.
Jean Claire Dy, humanities instructor and the show's artistic director, provided the lovely Odissi-inspired choreography.
Assisting Dy is another humanities instructor, John Bengan. The department's chair, Prof. Nino Soria de Veyra oversaw stage design and light mixing, making occasional adjustments that later he was deemed "choreography paramedic." Professor de Veyra also coughed up the show's catchy title.
Excitement after the opener continued with CW junior Hazel Genosas's vicious reading of Almerino's "Tabag sa Manananggal, Human Hukmi sa Ginoo (The Manananggal's response, after God's judgment)."
In honor of Sylvia Plath, Kaeos Angelo, a sophomore, slipped into her silk nightdress and breathed mad life to Plath's villanelle.
Her fellow sophomore Allen Samsuya complemented "Mad Girl's Love Song" with a haunting guitar improved. And before all the world dropped dead, Anne Sexton came with her "Again and Again and Again."
Mae Ann Pineda, a senior, gave a breathtaking recital, stoking the sexy in Sexton's brutal metaphors.
One of Bayla Vinta's youngest members, Catherine Rose Bengan interpreted Bjork's own take on E.E. Cummings's "it may not always be so, and I say."
The sonnet, transformed into a beautifully eerie track in Bjork's Medulla, was the stimulus to Dy's somber yet playful Yoga-inspired choreography.
Another highlight was Darcy Rubino's charmingly dissonant tuning of "i like my body when it is with your body," another Cummings gem.
Rubino, a CW freshman, set the mischievous poem to melodic punk rock. With Samsuya strumming on, Rubino's thrashing, pelvic performance brought the house down, not one lyric or note unsung.
After the punk assault, Jonasyl Auxtero, a graduating student and children stories writer, sent the crowd on another trip, moving lithely into Massive Attack's "Teardrop."
Capping the 40-minute show is a disembodied voice mouthing Adonis Durado's "Balaki Ko Day Samtang Gasakay Tag Habal-Habal (On this motorcycle, my dear, read me a poem)," matched on stage by a series of flashing visions of endless dirt roads. Never has a Cebuano courtship poem about motorcycle-riding sounded so fitting.
After the onslaught of syllables, smattering of sighs and shouts, Sinews of Syllables gave UP Mindanao its most memorable evening of poetry, movement and music in recent years. The muses of Bago Oshiro just couldn't wait to rock this sleepy mountain.
