BOGO City’s traditional courtship folk dance became the highlight of the city’s annual fiesta, which is now called the Kuyayang Festival.

The city used to celebrate the Pintos Festival every May 26, which coincides with the feast of St. Vincent Ferrer. It highlighted the city’s delicacy “Pintos,” or steamed corn tamales.

Kuyayang was the major dance during the street parade among the participating contingents.

Following the three-year hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the return of the annual fiesta this year now focuses on Kuyayang to revive the local courtship dance, according to the City Government.

“It is great that we have revived Kuyayang, because I want to extend to the public, especially to the young generation, that this is our tradition,” said Mayor Carlo Jose Martinez of Bogo City on Sunday, May 28, 2023.

Grandest edition

In a separate interview with Sheila Orcullo, overall fiesta chairperson of Kuyayang Festival, she said they have amped up the cultural celebration.

“We want to live up to our city status. Since 2007, the City of Bogo has been pronounced as a city, and yet in the previous years, it acted like it is just a municipality in terms of celebrating festivals,” she said.

Orcullo said that in previous years, the festival was allocated only P1 million, but for this year, the City spent between P3 million to P4 million.

“We are dreaming of being at par with Sinulog Festival,” she added.

She reported that 14 performing groups competed, as opposed to the previous festivities’ biggest number of participants at six.

In addition, 15 floats paraded on the streets during the city’s version of a mardi gras.

Subsidized

To aid the groups in preparing for their performances, each of the 14 competing performers was given P125,000 as a subsidy. Floats that joined the grand parade were granted P25,000 each.

The declared winners will also get monetary awards in addition to the subsidies with the champion getting P175,000, the second placer getting P160,000, the third placer getting P150,000, the fourth placer getting P140,000 and the fifth placer getting P130,000.

Non-winning contingents will receive a P125,000 consolation price while P10,000 will be given to each of the winners of special awards such as Best in Street Dancing, Best in Musicality and Best in Costume.

The 14 delegates, picked from the city’s 29 barangays, competed in the grand ritual showdown on Sunday, May 28, at the Don Celestino Martinez Sports and Cultural Center. / KJF