In
the vision of the visionary, the seer and the healer, the warrior and
story teller, the preserver of myths and the interpreter of dreams, LABAYEN
DANCE/MANILA's (LD/M) function is to seek and remind us of the power of
dance and theatre to connect us to what lies deep within us.
Through image, music, poetry contemporary and ethnic dances, and the re-living of memory, LD/M merges Southeast Asian movement and gestures with martial arts, American modern dance, European contemporary dance theatre and multi-gravitational approaches resulting in works that re-defines and challenges traditional dance ideas and conventional music values.
The Company performs cutting edge works that integrates classical ballet, multi-gravitational and aerial approaches, modern dance and Asian folklores, creating a potent yet strangely beautiful hybrid of language of image, experience and passion. From the controversial and powerful "Le Sacre du Printemps" (Rite of Spring) that is in a space that is as much primitive as it is psychic and still therefore controversial to "Unearthing" a minimalist work which depicts burial rituals and practices of Southeast Asian island tribe to the balletic "Songs" danced to Philippine folk songs; to the American award winning work for outstanding achievement in choreography "Puirt a Beaul" (Mouth Music) a Celtic inspired dances and the sensual and evocative "Cloth" to liturgical the "Die Suchenden" (Seekers). Labayen Dance/Manila creates performances that is at the same time a ceremony.
To some extent, Labayen Dance/Manila is constantly exploring the urgency of finding connection with another, the poignancy of failed communication and the humor and levity which punctuates many of our most intimate interactions are emotions that is a recurring theme in LD/M's repertory in the context of contemporary Philippine experience and as artists of color straddling its own duality of culture.
Reviews:
"Labayen's work and his company should be
shown in the major cities in the world."
-Hans-Otto Theatre, Germany
"hypnotic and mesmerizing…a refreshing vision of contemporary dance."
- Dance Magazine
"Labayen creates indelible image in dance that one cannot forget easily."
-Arab Daily, Jordan
"exquisite and evocative and complete and in a class by itself."
- Manila Bulletin
"a landscape of of impression, imagery and beauty."
-Straits Times, Singapore
"powerfully expressive….Labayen's work cannot be described by the word "modern dance"."
- General Anzeiger, Germany
"a quintessential contemporary dance company that does works rarely seen anywhere."
-San Francisco Pride, USA
"top-flight professional artists."
-The New York Times
The Dance Parade
by SpySandwich
This is how it is, seeing how it is to think with the body: you start with the man on the Luce Auditorium stage, bare like the proscenium he consumes with his presence, with only the hint of the blue cyclorama and the dispersed spotlight to play with in his dance solo. It begins like that, man alone on stage, sitting on the floor, soles down, head pressed against legs, arms clasped around the latter in an embrace. Then the man moves as the music fades in with the light.
There is something about Enrico Labayen that puts grace, like oil, into the odds he creates with his appearance: he is, after all, bare-chested, with head shaven, and even from the distance, his profile is strong and prominent, chiseled, bordering on beasty sexual. He sports a tattoo, a band that goes around one arm. His hand bears a fan he flaps in flamenco moves, and he wears draperies of white around his waist. Later when he dances to Puccini in a number he calls “Another Butterfly,” he treats that skirt like wings and malong, shaping all necessary expressions with it: all the music’s grief and beauty—the aria being Cio-Ciosan’s farewell in Madama Butterfly—enunciated in the turns of wrists, the contortions of torso, the leaps of faith, the twists of cloth, the flaps of fan. It is modern ballet that defies expectations. You see in it variations of the dancer’s influence: classical ballet, Southeast Asian gestures and martial arts, American modern dance, and European contemporary Tanz-theater approaches, “resulting in a work,” the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported, “that redefine and challenge traditional dance ideas and conventional music values”—yet all together in a soft blend that is distinctly intelligent: “I’m done with bravura,” Mr. Labayen tells PDI. “My dancing may be subtle now, but it requires more mind and spirit and not just pure body.”
The dance is an excerpt from a longer program entitled “Enrico Labayen Unbound,” something the dancer is importing after ten years of training in the United States—in San Francisco, where his dance studio is based. (Another dance in that repertoire includes his Isadora Duncan Award-wining work, “Cloth,” part of the ensemble he performs with dancers Myra Beltran, Ronilo Jaynario, Katherine Sanchez, and Lea Baduria.) The homecoming is long overdue—especially after having made a name for himself in the American dance scene. In the United States, he has been named by Filipinas Magazine as one of the “Filipino American Faces of the Century,” together with Lea Salonga, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Tia Carrere.
And now he dances, and thinks with the body, in the Luce Auditorium stage—a figure in frenzy and whirlwind, white skirt flying, fan flapping in his hands. In the end, his butterfly succumbs to the martyrdom the piece demands, Puccini punctuated with the sight of Labayen stepping out of the white skirt, naked, save for the strip of cloth in his loins, surrendering to the fading of music and light. The crowd went wild.
