Battle of the Bands

Every school has its traditions. One of them here in Manila is an event called Battle of the Bands. Taking place in two rounds, over two separate weekends, it allows for bands and individual singers to compete against each other. The best move on to the second round. This is taken quite seriously. As you can see from the pictures, there is a professional set up of stage and lights. We get one or two guest judges in the music industry to participate. It is a night of celebrating student talent. This year I managed to make it to the finals of the Battle of the Bands and now have a sense of what it all about. I was impressed by the diversity in song choice amongst performers and the quality of the music. I have to say we have some definite performers amongst our students which made the evening much more enjoyable. I'm still not quite sure how the one tenth grader managed to play his electric guitar behind his head...While music is not what I would consider one of my talents it is enjoyable to see what some of our high schoolers can do.

March's Museum: National Museum of Anthopology

In March Katie, Ryne and I headed into Manila to check out the second of the National Museums - The National Museum of Anthropology. It is housed in a newly renovated building on the edge of Rizal Park it was formerly the Department of Finance. The colonial style building makes for an impressive location for the Anthropology Museum.

The foyer of the National Anthropology Museum

We wove our way through three floors of exhibits. And as with the last time I was in one of the National Museums I found myself more interested in the exhibits at the top level, and wished we had started there before getting that overloaded feeling. The two things that stand out to me was how fascinated I was by the rice exhibit (really, rice!) which displayed tools and rice field guardians among other things.

Rice field guardians

There was also an interesting exhibit on artefacts recovered from the San Diego ship which sunk outside of Fortune Island in 1600. Interestingly it was a trading vessel that had been retrofitted with cannons as a warship. It was ill prepared to handle the extra weight and sunk because the cannon port holes ended up below water level. In 1992 the wreck was discovered and over 34,000 artefacts were recovered, many of which are on display in the museum. My favourite included a nice selection of the different types of stoneware jars.

Stoneware jars recovered from the shipwreck San Diego

There were other treasures in different exhibition halls. Weaving from different regions of the Philippines. Musical instruments. Woven rattan balls used to play sipa. Burial containers. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. It was a cross section of Filipino culture and quite an informative visit.

Burial jar

February's Museum: Corregidor Island

I have a long way to get caught up, I'm not quite sure what has happened except for having my  mom visit for a month and then school getting crazy. I suppose in some ways it is a good thing when life gets to busy to write! Now that my seniors are graduated I've got a bit more down time. Hopefully in the next two weeks I'll get caught up a bit.

 

While my mom was here visiting she wanted to take a trip out to Corregidor Island. Set at the mouth of Manila Bay it is the second most bombed island during WWII. Before the war it was a lush assignment for US military featuring gorgeous views, a movie theater, tennis courts and other recreational activities. During the war Corregidor served as the temporary house of the Philippine government, as well as the the Japanese used heavy artillery to storm their way into taking over the island, General McArthur pulling out with the often repeated statement "I will return."

          

 In 1945 the Americans returned to the Philippines, and heavily bombed the island before using paratroopers to get soldiers on the ground to continue the fight. Six days later things were looking grim for the Japanese and they retreated to the tunnels that had been dug through the island in defense. One group sealed themselves in, waited for American soldiers to be above them and then blew up the tunnel, taking out as many of the enemy as possible. Ten days later Corregidor was finally considered to be back in Allied control.

   

Approximately 6,650 Japanese died in the Battle of Corregidor, and around 500 Americans. Now the island services as a memorial to those who are gone. A somewhat somber day trip from Manila, it nonetheless offers an intimate view of the destructions of war. There are a multitude of bombed out remains, as well as peaceful memorials. There are flags flying in memory...somewhat to my surprise including the Texas flag and the ATM flag (upon inquiry we found that one of the battalions that landed on Corregidor had a large number of Aggies in it, 5 of whom were killed. So the school had donated a flag in their memory). 

The only way to visit Corregidor is through Sun Cruises. They run a ferry out on the weekends, and facilitate the guided tours which were very well done.

A week of dance

Without really realizing it, I ended up with a week of dance performances...no, not me dancing, but was in the audience for several different performances. It started out last Friday when I had a long weekend for Chinese New Year (Welcome the year of the dog). I stayed in town which gave me an opportunity to go see the dragon and lion dance on the other side of my neighborhood. It was pretty much me and a pile of small kids, but I enjoyed watching the antics in any case.

Lion dance for Chinese New Year

Sunday I headed downtown to check out a Ballet Manila performance called Ballet and Ballads. I had not idea what I would be getting, especially since I had won the tickets in a school raffle. Turns out it was ballet, but danced to live music which was being sung on stage for most numbers. I found myself a bit confused when after intermission the audience went crazy when a singer stepped out on stage. Turned out it was Christian Bautista, which meant nothing to me. I asked our taxi driver on the way home and he said he was a Filipino teenage heart throb. It definitely seemed to be the highlight of the performance for most of the audience. Not quite the experience I was anticipating as the audience sung along, yet somehow felt all the more Filipino because of it. After all people here do love to sing and dance.

Ballet Manila with live singers. Christian Bautista is in white.

Thursday I stayed late at school to watch our high school dance group run through their performance. Twenty minutes of a variety of dances with a huge amount of props (bungee cords, door frames, mini-tramps, laser lines) made me appreciate the opportunities that our students have just by virtue of being at our school. The stage they danced on was just as nice, if not nicer, than the other performances I watched this week. The time they put in was clear as the produced an impressive dance experience.

Dancers of the Bohol Dance Project

Friday night I ended up at a free performance at the Fringe Festival, a performance by the Bohol Dance Project taking place just a block from my apartment at the BGC Arts Center. They brought four male dancers in for their first performance outside of Bohol. You could see the emotion and thrill they had on being a stage in Manila, and couldn't help but get caught up in the excitement. Their two pieces were drastically different - one choreographed by a Romanian and the other a Filipino, each drawing on very different inspiration. If only more of my Friday evenings would end with a live dance performance like this.

January’s Museum: Museum of Contemporary Art and Design

Last month we headed out for what I hoped would be a double header on museums. I had seen that there was a sculpture garden in the general area that we were heading to, one that had a sculpture for each of the APEC countries. Figured that since it was cool enough to be outside and we were in the area that we should stop there first. Only it turns out the APEC sculptures aren’t actually in the APEC garden like logic might lead you to believe. Oh we saw two sculptures but none that I was expecting...guess I’ll have to give it another shot once I do a bit more research.

So then on to our actual museum. Which, thankfully, was exactly where I expected it to be, a 20 minute walk down the road. The Museum of Contemporary Art and Design is on the campus of the College of Saint Benilde's School of Art and Design and seems to be a fairly recent addition to the museum spaces in Manila. The museum has a lovely industrial warehouse feel to the open space. For the size of the space there was not much on display. Four exhibits took up a fraction of the space. One on the empty space of buildings, one an cardboard recreation of a beach scene (I found the artist’s annotated photos much more interesting, an interesting back lit display on spaces (my favorite I think) and a video installation set in Chandigarh (a city in India I’ve traveled through but never visited).

All in allI feel like the trip this month gave us a destination but not much more. I can’t really recommend the museum unless the exhibit is one you are particularly interested in. However if you’re in the area it might be worth a stop since it was free.

Requisite museum selfie,
probably our worst one yet!

Museum of Contemporary Art and Design

Tues - Sat 10-6, Sun 10-2

Free admission 

December's Museum: Yuchengco Museum

This weekend was the only time that we could find to fit in a visit to a museum this month, as the majority of the month will be spent traveling for Christmas (One more week! I'm so excited that I'll be in Myanmar soon.) and next week I am in the provinces with a group of students for a week of community service.

Hanging Zen Garden

Needless to say, with all of the stress and busyness that comes with the end of the semester we did not want an all day commitment for our museum visit. Turns out that there is a second museum in Makati, one of the closest neighborhoods to where I live, and so we set off to visit the Yuchengco Museum. It is a fairly new museum, having been started in 2005 to house the private collection of Ambassador Alfonso T Yuchengco. Located on four small floors, the museum seems to be mostly dedicated to changing exhibits with a few small rooms of permanent works on display. One of those permanent installations is a hanging zen garden of paper rocks that was a definite focal point.

Special Exhibit: Blessing Manila

Butterfly symmetry

The exhibit on display during our visit was a entitled Blessing Manila and had two floors of work by the Taiwanese artist Yang Ding Xian. We were absolutely enthralled by his symmetrical butterfly pieces that resembled kaleidoscope images on the third floor. Then when we hit the ground floor and came across some mountain inspired work a woman stepped up to us and said "You know, that is the artist right there." So we had the unexpected pleasure of spending 20 minutes talking with Mr. Xian about his work and his inspiration while a nice older man generously translated for us. I will admit that having that opportunity not only made me appreciate his work a lot more, but made me realize just how special it can be to truly understand what an artist is trying to represent with his work. I would have never dreamed that our random museum choice would result in a one-on-one discussion with the featured artist, but it definitely made for a special visit.

Katie listing to Yang Ding Xian

Yuchengco Museum
RCBC Plaza
Corner Ayala and Senator Gil J. Puyat Avenues
Makati City, Metro Manila
Hours: Mon-Sat 10 am-6 pm
Entry Fee: 100 pesos

An Update on Christmas Decorations

Market Market's lights

I thought that perhaps it was time to add an update on Christmas decorations, so you could get a sense of how over the top things get. It has taken me a while to get this together, so this is an idea of where things were in mid-November. Towards the start of the month I noticed that the red star and green Christmas tree had reappeared on the stop lights in my area of town, making me smile as I wait to cross the street.

SM Aura's sea themed decorations

The malls have gone all out. The one closest to me choosing an underwater theme this year, which I suppose is appropriate for the Philippines. I must admit their decorations are beautiful, even if they don't exactly evoke a Christmas feeling to me. I was a bit confused when I waited in line the other day to enter the display only to find a wrap around screen showing basically an aquarium tunnel. No Santa's snorkeling, no reindeer or snow. Not at all what I expected after last year. 

Powerplant mall is decked out

Of course other malls have gone the traditional route. With hanging lights and green trees. In fact Powerplant Mall was so decked out I found it a bit overwhelming. Green garland decked hallways, a huge tree....and then African Saharan animals with scarfs. Ummm...okay. The penguins on the other side of the lobby made a bit more sense to me. Until you start to think that no part of the Philippines gets cold enough for those birds. Sometimes you just have to suspend your sense of reality and enjoy the festive holiday spirit for what it is.

 

I guess I shouldn't be too surprised at the over the top decorations this year. After all I saw them last year. When we ventured out to a local market recently it was just stall after stall of Christmas, more Santas then I had ever seen together before. It does just make me wonder where do all the decorations go the other 8 months a year? I do need to get myself out after dark to a couple of places that will begin sound and light shows with the start of December, giving me the opportunity to realize that it does continue to ramp up as we get closer to the holiday.

  

Street market full of Christmas