ILOILO City – Dancers from the Matias Balbastro Dance Academy of Iloilo got a rare invite to perform in the 5th Kuching International Dance Festival 2022 held recently in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia.
This was the Iloilo-based dance group’s second time to represent the country in the three-day dance fest and was one of the two Philippine-based groups there aside from Halili-Cruz School of Ballet.
The MB Dance Academy was led by artistic director Matthew Balbastro and performers Leanne Reigh Lanceta, Kate Mitchelle Jaramillo, Mary Chelleen Faith Baylon, Joemel Jan Magallanes, and Jayson Gian Cala-or.
“This is our second time there and we made sure to entertain the crowd so we chose the ‘Una-una Kaya-kaya’ dance as it symbolizes the attitude of Filipinos to keep moving forward no matter the difficulty there is in life,” Balbastro said.
“Mixing the tribal feels of the music and the beat used in Latin American dances, we have come up with a choreography that was unexpected, receiving applaud from the neighboring countries,” he added.
“This form of art has been our way to communicate, bursting with finite passion, seizing the moments of being drenched in the knowledge prospered from one another,” the Ilonggo dancer continued.
Balbastro further said that they hosted a workshop session there where they trained kids from different countries the basics in competitive ballroom dancing while sharing depths about the dance and its origin.
“We are proud as Ilonggos to be invited to the workshop session because it allowed our group to share the uniqueness of Latin dance and also experiencing the different cultures of every country,” Balbastro narrated.
“This dance and cultural exchange have opened wide gates for the future and we hope to see further achievements hailing the Province and the Philippines soon,” he further said.
Aside from the two Philippine-based dance groups, also invited were Dance Guru of Thailand, Master Teacher Wang and Wei-Fan of Taiwan, Master Teacher Seo Jiyeon of Korea and The Dance Academy Kuching of Malaysia./PN
