Ballet Philippines: The Tales of the Manuvu

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Not until I was seated did I realize that I have not seen a ballet performance before-- and the one with Lisa Macuja at Star City does not count I think (that was ages ago too!).

Since it's my first time to watch I DIDN'T KNOW that ballets could (at this point I'm still guessing) have opening performanceS. Yes, that's not a typo, a large S because there were 4. Concerts have it, so far the musicals I've been to didn't have any so color me surprised when on the second performance it confused me a lot on what happened to the colorful costumes I've been seeing on their posters and the narrative I'm supposed to be seeing. There's a lot of tone colors, blacks and reds. I remembered skimming through the program and seeing something about "The Beginning of All Things". I certainly did not felt it on the first performance nor at the last and the third one made it all the more confusing when it's about a mother. Is this some allegory of sorts I could not understand? So at the 15 minutes interval I rifled through the program again. Jeez louise I was so wrong. Those 4 performances were separate from the TTOM! It now makes sense! I felt so stupid.

Because of that review I did, I realized that they've squeezed all three acts non stop in one long performance. Kudos to the singers, the dancers and Radio Sago Project for putting up for that long. I can't remember the time though, it could be an hour and a half and I won't know but you could see by our ballet dancers that it was more than just a workout, I could see their glistening sweat from my seat... and I'm seated at Row Q!

From what I read the Tales of the Manuvu were only performed two separate years, 1977 and 1985. It's almost as old as I am since it was last played! I won't know how it was back then but this iteration does feel it was updated to the modern audiences, heck they even used a rock band to do the instrumentals. My only gripe though is the opening does feel like there's something wrong with the audio, I could barely hear what our talented singers were saying. It's either their audio problem or most likely I'm too deaf to hear words. The set is colorful, I really did like that large durian it looked realistic although maybe the flair (do I even have that?) in me just wants over the top decors like what they did in the Lion King, but maybe that's just the pleb in me talking. What do I know with ballets anyway?


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