Maverhick: Costumes

Dinagyang in Vivid Color

WOODEN beads dancing with tribesmen’s every move, feathers in vivid colorstanding out against the gathered crowds,prisms of sinamay and hablon fabrics paraded by smiling dancers, and body paint gleaming under the sun.

Every Dinagyang, the streets of Iloilo come alive with the vibrant colors of the Kasadyahan and Ati Dance competitions, and the creative costumes our dancers wear, in all their over-the-top glory, play a big role in the beauty of our city’s spectacle. With 10 tribes competing for top prize this year, we expect even richer hues in Dinagyang’s kaleidoscopic spectacular.

Celso Guion, production manager and creative director of TribuPaghidaet shares that they are very excited to unveil this year’s performances.

Garnering the Best in Costume award and finishing 1st runner-up for Dinagyang 2015, they have a lot to prove this year. They dazzled last year’s audience with a performance that told the epic battle of Tribu Paghidaet’s archers against a giant centipede. Now they’re ready once more to amaze crowds with a new spectacle.

“Sa Tribu Paghidaet, we are not aiming for the championship, we just want to put on a great performance that the Ilonggos and tourists alike will enjoy,” said Guion.

With this year’s Paghidaet performance inspired by the classic Filipino horror Halimaw sa Banga, and another epic battle in the works, Tribu Paghidaet is excited to thrill for another year.

Guion shares that it literally takes a village to put together performances each year, especially when it comes to the making of costumes for the festival. With the tribe’s total of over 80 warriors and dancers this year, several people had to be involved in the designing and making of headdresses, attires, and props.

Twenty-two year-old Ron Matthews Espinosa is one of the new additions to the tribe’s team. A recent graduate of the University of San Agustin, he has designed costumes before for the USA Little Theater.

Espinosa will be crafting the costumes of three of the tribe’s special characters – the Babaylan, Magbabatok and Halimaw.

He shares that this year’s performance will not be about the height of risers and mobiles stages, but focus more on pure dance and the creation of beautiful costumes. About the symbolism in the colors of this year’s costumes, “Red that stands for Strength and Domination, blue for Peace and yellow for Elegance,” said Espinosa.

A first-timer in the Dinagyang stage, Espinosa is proud of the opportunity to be part of the annual celebration.

“I am humbled to work with the Paghidaet artistic team who has a brilliant vision of innovation, pushing the boundaries of Dinagyang for the last decades,” shares Espinosa.

“Dinagyang is a time for coming together, working together, reawakening in the hearts of everyone the virtues of cooperation, leadership and the willingness to commit to work. Mabudlay pero masadya,” shares Guion.

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, by Rhick Lars Vladimer Albay

Advocacy

Tumandok Threads

IN Kinno Florentino’s vision for Iloilo, the past and the future blend seamlessly into a hablon dress. He sees Iloilo’s women clad in garb inspired by our province’s Panay-Bukidnon communities, standing tall and proud against the city’s most iconic sites ¬– the Arroyo Fountain, Calle Real, the Molo Mansion ¬¬– their eyes fiery, staring fearlessly into the future.

Tubok, named after the Tumandok / Panay-Bukidnon tradition of ornate embroidery Panubok, is the first solo exhibit and fashion project of Kinno Florentino, a fourth-year Fine Arts student of the University of San Agustin. In Tubok, Kinno adds a unique spin to our province’s indigenous traditional costume, envisioning them worn by the modern Ilongga, all the while encouraging the preservation of local customs.

“I wanted to innovate the clothing, but still keep in mind Ilonggo culture,” said Kinno, expressing that fashion is his favorite art medium. “Panubok is one of the many unknown icons of Panay identity, and [it] should be learned [by coming] generations.”

Kinno shares he was once frustrated that Visayas’ indigenous people (IP), especially the communes of Central Panay, were not given as much attention as tribes from Luzon and Mindanao. Finding out about our island’s Panay-Bukidnon communities, he was awestruck by their vibrant and distinct customs.

For research and to stay true to the Tumandok tradition, Kinno visited the IP community in Barangay Garangan, Calinog four times in a span of six months, immersing himself in their culture. What he learned was the art of traditional embroidery and how it has been passed down from generation to generation for more than hundreds of years.

“[I saw that] through Panubok, our ancestors were not only able to share their traditions but also pass down knowledge and education,” recalls Kinno who sees his exhibit as a way to stir greater conversation about our province’s indigenous people.

A self-described “ambitious and demanding perfectionist,” Kinno expresses that he had to fight through a lot of time constraints to make his show perfect – finishing the fashion pieces in just over a month, and completing the all the wall-mounted paintings with just a week’s notice.

Kinno used local products to design his dresses, mainly the famed hablon of Miag-ao, embroidering them with traditional ornate patterns inspired by the Panay-Bukidnon panubok. “Each Panubok pattern has an exact meaning and is usually associated with animal features such as bird’s eyes, and snake skins,” shares Kinno.

To complement his fashion show, Kinno translated his designs to canvas. “The paintings of these clothes worn by Ilongga models set in different Iloilo Heritage sites will show how the modern women embrace their ethno-cultural identity and independence through fashion,” expressed the young artist.

Kinno dedicates his first solo exhibit to the Panay-Bukidnon community, showing earnestness to instilling a sense of Ilonggo identity and culture in coming generations. “It is important to preserve the identity of the Panay-Bukidnon and the stories that they tell,” muses Kinno, his eyes fiery, staring fearlessly into the future.