National Artist for Dance Alice Reyes is into her early 80s and still preoccupied with dance as she invites one in the restaging of one of her acclaimed works, Carmina Burana by Carl Orff.
Her June offering at the Samsung Theater for Performing Arts includes her Dugso (a groundbreaking collaboration with National Artist for Music, Dr. Ramon Santos), Norman Walker’s romantic pas de deux Summer’s End, and Augustus ‘Bam’ Damian III’s dynamic showcase of the company’s prowess, After Whom.
As far as she can recall, she was dance-bitten before she turned ten. “I started dancing with my papa (Ricardo Reyes) when I was about 6 years old. We were what you would describe as a father-and-daughter folk dance tandem.”
She has wonderful memories of her childhood. “But I like to think I hardly had any as I was dancing and performing all the time. Almost subconsciously, I thought this was a normal routine.”
She took up International Relations and History at Maryknoll College and pursued graduate studies at the Ateneo de Manila.
Initially, the dance icon thought she was going to be a diplomat. “I confided this to Ambassador Cookie Feria, head of Cultural Diplomacy department at the DFA when Margie Moran Floirendo, Dennis Marasigan and Chinggay Bernardo and I met with her to discuss partnership programs. I told them that I saw myself like her, a Foreign Service Officer. We had a good laugh.”
Indeed, her first degree had nothing to do with dance. She earned a BA in History and Foreign Affairs in Maryknoll College and was kept busy choreographing for school productions. She bagged the Best Choreographer’s Prize in a national choral festival with a dance sequence, Missa Luba and two others simply called Johann Sebastian Bach and Rumania.
In the late 50s, she was principal dancer of Bayanihan which toured Brussels and New York. She was also principal dancer of three other dance groups that found their way in dance festivals abroad and in TV productions in Manila.
Although she saw her first ballet with no less than Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin at the FEU Auditorium many years earlier, becoming a ballerina was farthest from her mind. “I don’t remember having reacted to that event as saying I wanted to be a ballerina. But like most impressionable kids, I was entranced by the beauty of that experience. Something about the music, the softness, the grace and the rapport between two people on stage touched me.”
Modern dance was really her cup of tea.
Her sojourn to contemporary dance started in the summer of ’64 when the cultural attache of the US Embassy offered her a summer dance scholarship with dance icon Hanya Holm at Colorado Springs College.
It was followed by another invitation to bring her to New York to meet the modern dance community.
It opened her eyes and mind. “I finally gave in and said to myself, Face it. Dance, it is.”
She was then 23 and spent two years with the Bayanihan, a year in Las Vegas. Earlier, she was a veteran of school productions, and choral competition festivals with her mother Adoracion Reyes for both Maryknoll College and Ateneo Glee Clubs. She remembers ending up in the TV shows of Nelda Navarro and Elvira Manahan, Lyn Madrigal, among others.
Meanwhile, the CCP Dance Company that she founded metamorphosed into Ballet Philippines (BP) where she was artistic director for many years.
A turning point in 2014 was when she was declared National Artist for Dance after Leonor Orosa Goquingco who was one of her mentors. Years later, it was the turn of another former BP artistic director, Agnes Locsin, to be declared National Artist for Dance.
When she returned to native grounds after many years abroad, she came to terms with new audiences and a totally different breed of dancers from the new generation. “It was always a pleasure to work with a new set of dancers, all anxious to do their best.”
When she was asked by Margie Moran Floirendo to help bring BP to its 50th year in 2017, she staged as many of the best of Filipino works in dance that she could to make sure these were seen by the new audiences.
Now she sees the dance milieu in a different light.
The National Artist for Dance reflects: “Such a different world of dance now as it is with everything else in our lives. Thanks to the internet, everyone with a handheld smart phone has access to any dance, any dance company, any dancer, any dance event anywhere in the world. Anyone interested in dance is well informed. Before, we had to bring in the stars like Margot Fonteyn and Nureyev and teachers like Norman Walker and Chabukiani, among others.”
But for Alice Reyes, there is nothing like live theater compared to impersonal contacts with YouTube and other internet platforms. “The experience of live theater is where the difference lies. This is something we in the dance and music and theater arts need to focus on. How to bring in everyone — young and old alike to experience live theater, a live Carmina Burana with the live PPO and live singers and dancers all onstage bringing landmark works back to life.”
She is grateful to be able to revisit some of her choreographic gems. “Often, I had very limited time to choreograph a work when I jump in when an invited choreographer could not come. When given the chance to restage, I will take advantage and dig into a section, tweaking it, working with the dancers, and improving that part until I was happy. I think it is time for our young choreographers to work and meet the creative challenges and produce works that will carry on with the artistic excellence of the many masterpieces in our current repertoire. That is what I am doing now- challenging, encouraging, mentoring. I am proud of the new works that have been created and I take delight in seeing those on stage, just as I take great delight in bringing back old masterpieces in our repertoire.”
Some of her works she considers turning points are Amada based on Nick Joaquin’s short story, “Summer Solstice”. It started as her thesis for Master of Fine Arts major in Dance at Sarah Lawrence College. “Tita King (National Artist for Music Lucrecia Kasilag) and I worked with her composition when I was asked to present my first modern dance concert at the CCP back in 1969. This became the score for the piece as it now exists in our repertoire. I turned to my folk-dance roots, tribal rhythms and a long-standing advocacy for women’s rights.”
Others quickly followed suit such as Tommy to the music of Who. “This led to Tales of the Manuvu based on Arsenio Manuel’s Manobo mythologies with a ground-breaking rock opera music by Nonon Pedero and libretto by Bien Lumbera. Rama Hari followed with its Asian theater influences, but again, as a rock opera ballet.”
That was the time she collaborated with the then very young Ryan Cayabyab, Bien Lumbera and Salvador Bernal.
Moreover, she challenged herself in the classical ballet genre with her own versions of Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella and a new version of Nutcracker set in a Filipino turn-of-the-century mansion with Filipino costumes designed by Badong Bernal. A select group from Manila’s 400 danced with the company. “It was fun!” she recalled.
Now busy with the revival of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, she recalls how it came about. “If my memory serves me right, we first did it with the Manila Symphony Orchestra under Helen Quach”
They performed it with the full orchestra on stage and with the dancers sharing the stage with the conductor, singers, choir and the musicians. “It was glorious.”
This led Reyes to plan a new Carmina Burana as a theatrical dance piece with sets and costumes by Salvador Bernal. “That is the version we are doing now.”
She knows that life is full of changes and is aware the Samsung Theater in Makati can only accommodate so much from orchestra to singers and choir. “Now we are working with our technical director Barbie Tantiangco on where to find space for the Madrigal Singers, the Kilyawan Children’s Choir and guest singers who should be all on stage.”
As she braces for another opening night in June, Reyes can only remember the first birth pains of a dance company she nurtured up to the very end.
She recalls that the company toured as the Alice Reyes Modern Dance Company which performed in London at the invitation of then Ambassador Jaime Zobel de Ayala. France and Soviet Union followed then Australia at the opening of the Sydney Opera House and then on to Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.
She remembers the 52-performance tour in Asia, the rave reviews reflecting the surprise of audiences used to seeing many Filipino folk dance groups now taken aback by this Filipino dance company with programs equally at home with both Western music and with their own Filipino music and dancing assorted genres of dance with great technical ease and performing expertise .
In the 80s, she remembers the company’s partnership with the American Ballet Theater with guest stars Natalia Makarova, and Patrick Bissel, Fernando Bujones, Leslie Brown, Martine Van Hamel, and Eleanor D’Antuono.
There was no way the company could do it alone.
They worked with all the embassies and cultural institutions like the Thomas Jefferson Library and the Alliance Francaise, and the Goethe House, the British Council. “With the Japanese Embassy’s support, we had Yoko Morishita repeatedly returning and dancing with our own Nonoy Froilan. The company had Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev in the timeless ballet, Marguerite and Armand.
After 20 years, the transition saw her passing the baton of artistic directors to Edna Vida, Denisa Reyes, Agnes Locsin, Cecile Sicangco and others, including Bam Damian, Max Luna and Alan Hineline, and
Paul Morales. “The company and its school grew, and expanded its repertoire of new works reflecting the times and the vision of each artistic director. When Agnes Locsin was able to finally travel, she gave us her works among them Igorot, Moriones and Encantada.”
In the next few years, she will still do a lot of collaborations as National Artist for Dance as she travels to the various regions to encourage the governors and mayors to establish their own Cultural Centers.
She feels a lot more can still be done like funding dance workshops and providing scholarships to deserving dance students with talent to become performing artists and choreographers and teachers. “Let’s face it, dance can only thrive with creative collaborations unless you wanted to dance by yourself, for yourself, and in silence. As a creative dance artist, you needed to collaborate with dancers, with composers, designers, actors and singers, with technical people and most of all, the marketing people. You have to partner with patrons of the arts who can provide funds to enable you to create as an artist. In that sense, I would say choreography is a giving art.”
On her 8th decade, Reyes admit that memories crawl in more often and these make her smile a lot.
As for the possibility of an autobiography, she feels she is not going to be preoccupied with it. “I was one who never kept albums so I was thankful to my father who did, and my sister Beatrice Homann who lived in New Jersey. They carefully put albums together of all the photos and news clippings Papa would send to her. I now have their handiwork for which I am most grateful. But my tendency then was to look forward, never backward. As to writing a book, I will probably I start it the way I started answering your questions…”I started dancing at age 6 with my father…”
She figures the book will also end with her scrawled statement on its last page –
A life well shared…Honoring those who have given in the past.
Saluting those who are the future. Celebrating legacy. Here and now!
She concludes: “That sentiment still rings true today.”