Silliman U.'s Golden Year of Arts & Culture

A weekend in our adopted hometown of Dumaguete is always welcome, especially if it has to do with helping promote a facet of Silliman University that has yet to be fully appreciated. 

On the last weekend of January, arts and culture honchos from Metro Manila as well as a media contingent were invited for proper immersion, and came away enthralled over a tradition that started all of fifty years ago.

That was when Silliman U’s Culture and Arts Committee was founded, with Miriam G. Palmore, then director of the School of Music and Fine Arts (now the College of Performing Arts) serving as the first chair. The idea was to have the university offer a regular series of cultural presentations, not simply as individual offerings by the various university departments. 

That same year of 1962 was when the ground-breaking Silliman University Summer Writers Workshop was first organized, by Dr. Edilberto K. Tiempo and Dr. Edith L. Tiempo.

Last May, the 50th batch of creative writers assembled in Dumaguete and celebrated the national writing workshop’s golden anniversary, with “Mom” Edith still lending her venerable presence, although the workshop had already passed on to the directorship of her daughter Rowena Tiempo Torrevillas. 

It wasn’t too long after that our first Filipina National Artist for Literature passed away, so that once again many of the writing community that had been nourished by SU and Dumaguete found themselves sharing in the grief in situ.

This time, the reason for a return to Duma was a joyous one: to share in the announcement of the CAC’s 50th season, enjoy its prelude that was a showcase of the university’s talents, and break bread with the CAC’s members led by Chair Prof. Diomar Abrio — including Isabel Vista, Prof. Elizabeth Susan Vista-Suarez, Dr. Laurie Raymundo, Prof. Joseph B. Basa, Arlene Delloso-Uypitching, Annabelle Lee-Adriano, and writer Ian Casocot.

Karla Gutierrez of the Philippine Opera Company about to break out into an aria while exulting over the view of Tambobo Bay from the fabulous hilltop residence of sculptor Karl Aguila

This golden year’s cultural season actually starts in June, with numerous performers and cultural outfits from Manila expected to add more luster to the performance tradition built up over the years at the world-class Luce Auditorium that first opened its doors in 1975.  

As a venue, the Luce has long been noted as providing the best theater experience outside Manila, with internationally renowned musical artists joining its roster of invited guests. Among these have been our very own top-notch performers like Cecile Licad, and a host of others, such as American soprano Julia Finch, German violinist Dense Zsigmondy, French pianist Nicole Delannoy, and the Taipeh Children’s Choir, to name but a few.

On its stage have also shone the university’s own talents, such as the SU Men’s Glee Club under the baton of music icon and professor Albert Faurot, the Silliman Young Singers and Luce Choral Society under Isabel Dimaya Vista, the Silliman Dance Troupe (now the Kahayag Dance Company) under Lucy Jumawan, the Aldecoa Family Ensemble, the Portal Players under Amiel Y. Leonardia, the Kwerdas and Campus Choristers founded by Priscilla Magdamo-Abraham, Emmy Luague and Ruth Imperial Pfeiffer, and Musika Sacra, founded by divo Elmo Makil.

As a treat for the visitors and by way of launching the CAC’s golden anniversary, director Dessa Quesada Palm mounted a charivari billed as Handulantaw (a coinage that melds “handum/handumanan” (reminisce/keepsake) and “lantaw” (looking forward). 

Silliman University president Ben S. Malayang

Homegrown National Artists Edith L. Tiempo and Eddie Romero (for Film) as well as Prof. Faurot were honored, with a dance interpretation of Mom Edith’s seminal poem “Bonsai” proving memorable.

The show also featured other dance numbers, classical, pop and ethnic music, and an excerpt from Godspell, serving as a tribute to its director, Prof. Evelyn Aldecoa, who passed away a few days after the musicale was presented in full last December.

At a press-con held on the lovely campus grounds by the age-old Silliman Hall, with the sea a breath away, among the guests were CCP president Raul Sunico, Ballet Philippines artistic director Paul Morales, and Karla Gutierrez who heads the Philippine Opera Company.

Among the outstanding national performance groups that were announced to be joining Dumaguete’s 2012 cultural calendar were the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, Manila Symphony Orchestra, Philippine Madrigal Singers, Philippine Opera Company, Ballet Philippines, Ballet Manila, Bayanihan National Dance Company, Ramon Obusan National Dance Company, Repertory Philippines, Philippine Educational Theater Association, Dulaang UP, Tanghalang Pilipino, and New Voice Company.   

The maestro Ryan Cayabyab is also expected, while the British Council and Japan Foundation are sending representative performers. An additional feature will be a local edition of the Cinemalaya Film Festival.     

Himself a piano maestro who performed at Silliman in the 1970s, Raul Sunico acknowledged that the university “had the most active cultural group outside of Metro Manila.” For his part, SU president Ben S. Malayang III expressed that “culture is essential to education,” and as such, has become “an integral part of Silliman education; it is not residual or marginal, it is not ad hoc, it is not accidental, but deliberate.”

We had taken the same flight from Manila as President Malayang. At the airport, he had told us how the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) had reportedly denied, for the first time since a yearly arrangement was started way back, Silliman’s application for the usual grant for the National Writers Workshop.

Arlene Delloso-Uypitching reads a poem by National Writers Workshop Fellow and Palanca Hall of Famer Elsa Martinez –Coscolluela during dinner at Antulang Beach Resort

At the press-con, he confirmed that he saw the letter of denial only when he came in the day before. We had previously heard of various reasons for the thumbs-down: that the grant application had been sent late (to which the SU English Department reasoned that it had been busy coordinating the wake and state funeral arrangements for National Artist Edith L. Tiempo last August, and that an NCCA functionary had said at the interment rites that this was understandable), that the NCCA was now operating at a deficit, since the previous dispensation had spent too much of its budget, etc.

Well, maybe another reason is that the NCLA or Committee for the Literary Arts is now headed by someone who has partnered with another lady in implementing the view that the National Writers Workshop has long been treated as a spoiled darling. Methinks it also has to do with relative mediocrity as poets themselves, plus a gripe last year over how the Taboan literary conference had been conducted in Davao City without this Iligan Writers Workshop mainstay’s participation. She had then threatened to expose certain non-literary liaisons that had nothing to do with the rules pertaining to Taboan participation.

When we wrote about that nefarious attempt to get other Mindanao writer-friends to support her hate drive, it seems the other lady, her friend, felt referred to, no matter that her own poet-husband has always been held in high esteem by us — for his poetry, friendship, and quality of humor.

I myself had applied for a travel grant for my participation this month in the 8th Granada International Poetry Festival in Nicaragua, an offshoot of my participation in the Medellin International Poetry Festival in Colombia four years ago, for which the NCCA had then provided travel support. I sent in my application on time. I never received a reply, until a week ago, declaring regrets.

The sunset view from the Aguila residence off Siaton

I can understand whatever reason may be behind it, whether it’s the budget deficit, or the noble one that younger writers be awarded the support instead, or even the imagined enmity. But I say that the NCCA and NCLA should get their act together soon, and learn to send their thumbs-down replies much earlier, so that applicants can turn to other options sooner.

As it is, SU Prez Ben Malayang affirmed while we were in Dumaguete that the 51st edition of the National Writers Workshop will go on this May, even without the expected funding from the NCCA. Well and good. We’ll all help Ben on that one.

As for my own sorry application, it’s all right. I did find another institution that generously, quickly stepped in. Maybe they know quality of poetry, and the pride I somehow give our country when I share my poems before a foreign audience.

Thus, as you read this, I would have settled in at Granada, a historic old city an hour’s drive from Managua, where over 60 international and local poets have been assembled for daily readings in public places. I should be practicing my readings in their Spanish translation. Maybe that’s the only way I can attempt to blow such a one as Derek Walcott off the stage.