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| City Guide - Manila - Culture | ||
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Culture The rich and highly seasoned broth of Philippine popular culture has not always transferred into equally striking manifestations among the cultural elite, most of whom are highly Westernised. The generally high level of education among the middle classes means that the arts enjoy a more informed and cosmopolitan public than in many developing nations, especially for dance. The Cultural Center of the Philippines, Roxas Boulevard, Malate (tel: (02) 551 0144; website: www3.admu.edu.ph/ccp), is the temple for many of the high arts. It was a pet-project of Imelda Marcos and, in true Pharaonic style, supposedly contains the bodies of workers buried in cement as its builders raced to meet her deadlines. It also is the nearest thing Manila has to a central ticketing agency for most of the arts. The National Commission for Culture and the Arts (tel: (02) 527 2192) is the modern national steering body that promotes Philippines arts and culture. City event listings can be found at www.legmanila.com. Music: The Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (tel: (02) 832 1120) is the chief classical ensemble. The Philippine Chamber Choir has grown to a choral force of considerable stature. As with other arts, they and other orchestras appear frequently at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Open-air classical recitals are particularly popular, taking place within Intramuros, in Paco Park or at Rizal Park Amphitheater in Rizal Park (tel: (02) 535 3353). Theatre: Dulaang Talyer is a top contemporary and avant-garde company. The Cultural Center of the Philippines plays to the very highest level of the repertoire, with the Folk Arts Theater (tel: (02) 832 1120) within the same complex preserving and interpreting traditional dramas. The William Shaw Theater on the fifth floor of the Shangri-La Plaza, Mandaluyong (tel: (02) 633 4821), has comedies and more serious fare. Intramuros has its own theatre company and theatre, the Rajah Sulayman Theatre at Fort Santiago (tel: (02) 527 2961). Open-air events take place at the Rizal Park Ampitheater (see Music above). Dance: With dance featuring highly in many Philippines cultural traditions, it is no surprise that ballet and performance arts are one of the major cultural exports. The Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group and the Bayanihan Dance Company (based at the Philippines Women's University) are two major exponents of traditional dance. Ballet Philippines is the top national troupe for classical and modern repertoire and interpretations of local traditions. They and other groups also perform at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. AC DanzMove is the resident dance troupe of Assumption College, Makati City. Film: The Philippines has an active film industry, producing mostly predictably sentimental and violent fare. President José Estrada started his career as a matinée idol before moving on to the political stage: it is hard to know whether this says more about Philippine film or Philippine politics. Film buffs will always remember that Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) was shot in the Philippines, with Marcos furnishing the helicopters for the famous 'Ride of the Valkyries' air cavalry charge. Less well known is the fact that Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) used Manila for Jakarta instead of Saigon. Shangri-La Cinema at the Shangri-La Plaza on the corner of Shaw Boulevard and EDSA, Mandaluyong City (tel: (02) 633 7851), and SM Megamall on EDSA, Ortigas Center, Mandaluyong (tel: (02) 633 1901 or 632 9408), are major multiplex cinema venues. More intellectual venues can be found in Santa Cruz around the junction of CM Recto Avenue and Rizal Avenue, or in Paco on Pedro Gil Street. Cultural events: The Bamboo Organ Festival at Las Piñas Village, near Manila, takes place in the second week of February every year, and brings the world's foremost organists to this charming small town. The Manila Film Festival in June is arranged to coincide with the foundation celebrations of the city on June 24, to give celebrants a chance to see their favourite stars. Literary Notes Manila has found surprising literary favour, as befits a nation whose founding martyr José Rizal was a novelist: his Noli Me Tangere (1887) established modern Philippine literature and is a key work in the evolution of the modern national consciousness. His El Filibusterismo (Subversion) (1891) is even more explicit in its dissection of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines. His successors, however, remain mostly unknown to an outside audience. British writers have contributed some of the best recent interpretations of Manila. James Hamilton-Paterson has published Ghosts of Manila (1994), a tale of horrible goings-on in the twilight of the Marcos era thinly fictionalised from real events. James Fenton showed up in Manila for the last act of the Marcos soap opera: his memoir The Snap Revolution (1986) captures the occasion, albeit from an arguably patronising and Marxist perspective. Corazon Aquino and the Brushfire Revolution (1995) by Robert Reid and Eileen Guerrero interprets the events differently but also with a jaded eye. William Boyd used Manila in 1902 as the backdrop for his The Blue Afternoon (1997). Timothy Mo's Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard (1995) makes a great play of Manila's notorious electricity outages, weaving them with more than a whiff of scatology. A Short History of the Philippines (1969) by Teodoro Agoncillo is probably the best work to cover its brief. |
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