Rey Anthony H. Chiu
TAGBILARAN CITY, April 23 (PIA) --Expect a livelier, merrier and
more densely composed dancing contingents vying for the Saulog sa Tagbilaran
Street Dancing Competition this April 26.
This as 15 of the 15 city districts are fielding dancing
contingents in the street dancing and ritual competition are now given
P200,000.00 as cash subsidy for the record to beat: most widely participated
street-dancing event in the city.
It is not easy to organize a dance contingent and the subsidy, at
least, make it bearable for the barangays, whose chairmen have strongly
supported the Saulog, said the city information officer, Fiel Angeli
Araoarao-Gabin.
Choreographers from distant regions and instrumentalists are
having a field day and nights as district contingents even close their
rehearsals to the public to really show something that would enthrall the
crowd, she shared.
She said organizers may not be able to strip off the usual dance
steps alien to Bohol culture, but Gabin, who used to be a dancer from the famed
Bohol High School Bukangliwayway Troupe added that dancing contingents must
show at least four basic dance steps which are among the judging criteria:
panguros, panukdok, pagpanipilya and paghalad.
These are the most basic tasks of the saint worker upon which the
city is enthroned.
Speaking at the Kapihan sa PIA, Gabin assured a bigger and better
Saulog sa Tagbilaran, which she described as a thanksgiving to St Joseph for
the blessing bestowed on the city under Mayor John Geesnell Yap and the local
officials.
Poised to aggressively push for tourism by making the city, not
just as entry and exit point for Bohol tourists, Tagbilaran presents the City
of Friendship as a veritable tourism destination in itself, according to Gabin.
The Saulog streetdancing, apart from being a dance offering of the
life of Saint Joseph, also allows Tagbilaranons to showcase what the City of
Friendship has to offer.
Also to watch during the streetdancing event are the Festival
Queens, the most fitting epitomes of Tagbilaran as a city of grace, color and
character.
And for another first, the competition would be claiming the city
streets and main thoroughfare; not on the usual vespers day of the feastday of
the city's patron Saint Joseph the Worker, but on Sunday, April 26.
(mbcn/rahc/PIA-7Bohol)