Cecil Go's dazzling dance on canvas

MANILA, Philippines - Paint the floor with your feet.” This is how Cecil Go teaches his students how to dance. And with that, you get an insight into the kind of artist that he is. “You have to feel the canvas,” he says about painting, “in the same way you need to get connected with the floor when you dance.”

It is difficult to say whether Cecil Go is more of an artist or a dancer. He approaches both with the same passion.

Go is preparing for an exhibit of his paintings, which is being planned in April. It will be his first. He showed us the canvases he is working on — big frames depicting different species of heliconias, those tropical flowering plants more popularly known as lobster-claws or false bird-of-paradise. Bright hues of red, orange, yellow, pink and greens pop out of the canvases. A number are yet unfinished. They are works-in-progress, the way Go himself, still youngish-looking at 47, appears to be.

Go is also an Argentine tango dance master, spending a good part of his day at the dance studio. In the mornings, he practices with his dance partner, dance champion Edna Ledesma. From 12 noon onwards, he holds his one-on-one classes with his students who may themselves be dance instructors and their guests, with ages ranging from 25 years to a 78-year-old, who has been coming to the dance studio for the past 18 years. Go has also been a coach as well as a judge in dance competitions. He attended dance workshops in Hong Kong and Japan.

Go visited and stayed in Argentina, first for three weeks, then two months, not only to further hone his skill, but also to learn more about the culture that produced this romantic dance, which originated from the suburbs of Buenos Aires. At the same time, he visited museums, particularly the National Museum in Buenos Aires where he saw the works of the old masters from Europe such as Cezanne, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Monet.

The influence of Rembrandt can be seen in an early work by Go where he used charcoal on watercolor paper utilizing the painting technique chiaroscuro, depicting the interplay of light and shadow, for which the Dutch painter is well-known. Go painted a night scene in a farm in La Union where Go once stayed, and the only source of light is the pugon or hut where tobacco leaves are dried and smoked.

Later, using oil on canvas, Go painted the same scene at daytime, depicting the rural scene in the realistic style of an Amorsolo, showing a flowing river, a nipa hut in the background, and the lighted pugon on one side. “There is no Amorsolo painting with a pugon,” Go says, and he throws the challenge for anyone who can show him one painted by the country’s first National Artist. The challenge for him, Go says, is “to be better than Amorsolo.” Go’s very first canvas is a painting in sepia of an 88-year-old blind woman smoking an Ilocano cigar, which he says is with the National Museum.

Cecil Go, who teaches Argentine tango, is preparing for an art exhibition in April. “You have to know the basics,” he says. In his paintings for the exhibit, his aim is to show the cycle, from classic to contemporary.

While he describes his style as realistic, Go uses the painting techniques utilized by the Impressionists. He starts by painting the background first before adding the main subject, “which I can already see in my mind,” he explains. He had a chance to visit the museums in Europe such as the Louvre in Paris and Musee d’ Orsay, which holds an extensive collection of Impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces. After seeing the works by Claude Monet, “it changed my way of seeing,” he says. “I did not only see, but felt the way the masters did.”

For 14 years, Go studied and consulted with veteran artist Rudy Herrera in his art studio, until he died two years ago. Go believes that one must first learn the rudiments before innovating. “You have to know the basics,” he says. In his paintings for the exhibit, he likes to show the cycle, from classic to contemporary.

He’d like to show that the two can go together, and that he is able to do both.

Go started by doing portraits, which he says is his forte. He shows a portrait he did of a Chinese businessman whom he had coached in ballroom dancing. The portrait shows the 91-year-old holding a cell phone, texting. Go calls attention to the realistic way the color of his skin and the way his hands were painted, which is the most difficult, he says.

Hanging on a wall in his sala is a self-portrait showing him carrying his infant son. Go has four kids, three boys and one girl, who all live with his wife in Davao. He visits them monthly while his work keeps him in Manila most of the time. He lives in a vintage house where he has transformed the interiors into a virtual showcase of fine furniture made of recycled hardwood, narra and kamagong. He designed his own bed and headboard, and had it built by his resident skilled carpenter named Bok.

Go was born in Manila but grew up in Zamboanga City. He has visited many parts of Mindanao during his younger years. It seemed most unlikely, for someone who studied accounting in college, to end up with painting and dancing as his professions.

As a dance master, he believes he must find the capability of his student and enhance it. “If you can walk, you can dance,” he says. “I can’t make my student move the same way I move. You must move the way you move. Be yourself.” Which is how he approaches his painting, too. He feels he must simply express himself.

Go would like to learn more about painting. In his continuing quest to expand his horizon, he would like to visit the Prado museum in Spain, among others, “not only to see but to learn from what I see,” he says. “I consider myself still in the process of learning.”

The teacher is a student, too.