Pas De Bourree It Forward

For those that the Muse Of Dance chose to mentor me--
Sofia Zobel-Elizalde
Enrico Labayen
Denisa Reyes
...and the men and women that
unconditionally shared their
skills, time and wisdom.

I am not the kind of dancer that my colleagues would call a virtuoso. Neither am I the kind that choreographers would beg on their knees to dance for them. Nor the kind that teachers would kill for, to own pedagogy.

I am just a single unit in the multitude. There will be no tributes staged for me in this lifetime or in the lifetimes that will follow. My life will not be recorded by historians, or studied by scholars. There won't be a school of dance named after me. I am not among the great movers of this artform. Bautista is far from Vaganova, or Forsythe, or Graham, or Cechetti, Nureyev. It doesn't belong to the lines of Labayen, or Reyes, or Jumalon, or Fabella, or Nierras, or Beltran, or Morales.

In the dance atlas, I am insignificant. Invisible, even. But the way by which dance rules my life is neither insignificant nor invisible. It feeds me. It nourishes me. And it keeps me alive. And I wouldn't be enjoying my dancer's life now if not for my mentors who never got tired of sharing--- my mentors who gave and gave and made sure I was learning as much as I can, without even asking for anything in return. Not a single centavo to pay for my tuition fee.

To them, I will forever be grateful. It is my turn to share. My turn to pay it forward.

The Likha Babies prepared
a pre-workshop feast that
we shared on Chater Road in Central

One more picture before digging in.

Good food. Good conversation. Good company.
And it only got better after this sumptuous lunch.

Day 1 Output


Day 2 Output