ANGELES CITY -- The city's heritage district will once again come to life this Friday with dance and song.
Artists and dancers from all over Pampanga will troop to this city tomorrow (April 29) at 5:00 pm for the Yugyugan Para sa Kultura ng Bayan 2.
Choreographers, school dance troupes and other artists’ organizations region wide will express their passion for the art of dancing together as one.
Officially dubbed as “Yugyugan Para sa Kultura ng Bayan, Pagkakaisa para sa Kapayapaan” the purpose of this nationwide festivity is for cultural & heritage preservation, peace, and unity.
The event is spearheaded by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts- National Committee on Dance (NCCA-NCD) in line with the celebration of National Dance Week and International Day of Dance (IDD).
According to Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan, it is a privilege for the city to once again become a part of the National Dance Week through Yugyugan, further stating that Angeles is not shy to bare its cultural and traditional heritage.
“We consider hosting the Yugyugan in its second year as a privilege and a concrete manifestation of how we cherish and protect our cultural heritage and identity,” the mayor said.
Participating schools and organizations include Angeles City League of Dancers, Republic Central Colleges, Pampanga State Agricultural University, Body Shocks Dancers, City College of Angeles, System Plus College Foundation, Francisco G. Nepomuceno Memorial High School, Angeles City National Trade School, Sinukwan Kapampangan Training Center for the Arts, Holy Angel University Dance Theatre, Sto. Rosario Elementary School, Angeles City Dance Athletes, Claro M. Recto Information and Communication Technology High School, and the Angeles University Foundation-College of Education.
Aside from Angeles City, the dance rally will simultaneously occur in Roxas City in Capiz, as well as in Cebu City.
The annual celebration of the International Dance Day (IDD) was created under the auspices of UNESCO in Paris and held all over the world by the International Theater Institute (ITI) on April 29. Its objective is to celebrate dance, to revel in the universality of this art form, to cross all political, cultural and ethnic barriers and bring people together with a common language, which is dance.
While in the Philippines, the Presidential Proclamation No. 154, which declares the fourth week of April every year as the National Dance Week, aims “to bring together dancers to demonstrate and realize the function of dance in the society and in the rest of the world.
Other dance activities
While April is dubbed as the month for food with the Department of Tourism’s Flavors of the Philippines, Angeles is and was host to several dance activities other than the Yugyugan.
The first of these was held in April 7, which was a workshop on dance technique and lyrical and modern jazz. Said workshop was facilitated by Marrion Jeremy M. Quiambao of the Commonwealth Society of Teachers of Dancing in Singapore. Quiambao was also a recipient of the 2016 Pupul ning Banua Awards.
Meanwhile, the children at Bale Balayan Museum for the Poor met with dance master Einojo Senju from Japan for MusikAsya, a music collaboration held April 25.
Einojo also performed a Japanese traditional dance, accompanied by a shamisen instrument in a Japanese cultural exchange held Wednesday (April 26) at the Plaza Angel also in the Heritage District. Einojo is a Classical Japanese Dance Teacher in the Osaka University of Health and Sports Science and is founder of the Classical Japanese Dance Group Senju Buyodan.
For more information about the events, contact 0977-377-1585 or visit the Angeles City Tourism Office’s Facebook page at fb.com/AngelesCityTourismOffice. (AC-CIO with reports from Jazmine Henson and Kristine Joy Bucad)