MANILA, Philippines — After a three-year hiatus brought about by the pandemic (although virtual versions were staged), Iloilo’s Dinagyang Festival returns to the streets with a vengeance this festive weekend.
Drumbeats will once again fill the air, and cheers and loud applause are expected to break out as competing tribes go through their adrenaline-pumping performances and set the streets of the City of Love on fire with fun and excitement.
It would be the highlight of Iloilo’s well-known Dinagyang Festival, which is one of the country’s most important festivals. It takes place on the fourth Sunday of January annually, with a series of activities spread over a number of days preceding the main celebration.
The religious and cultural festival is held in reverence of the Santo Niño, the image of the Child Jesus to whom the Filipino people show much devotion, and traces the arrival of the Catholic faith and devotion to the Santo Niño in the Western Visayas province. Marked with flamboyant ethnic costumes and traditional Ati style dances, the Dinagyang Festival used to be known as the Iloilo Ati-Atihan before it was given its own name following the Ilonggo term, dinagyang, which means revelry.
The grand celebration, which tourists troop to Iloilo for every January, is marked by much color, excitement and revelry leading up to the climax, the Ati Competition.
Everyone, both locals and tourists, look forward to the Ati Competition because it showcases choreographed street dances of competing tribes. Performers with painted faces and bodies and garbed in colorful tribal warrior costumes complete with feathered headdresses dance to thundering drumbeat that show the establishment of their respective tribes’ devotion to the Santo Niño. In the end, the best of the best would be awarded the grand championship.
This year’s Dinagyang Festival commenced on January 13, with the opening salvo attended by some 20,000 local and foreign visitors, who caught a glimpse of the performances of the competing tribes.
Besides the festivities, several religious activities took place, including nine-day novena masses, a motorcade of the Santo Niño around the city, and the Fiesta Señor concelebrated high mass. Plus the Miss Iloilo 2023 coronation night, the highly anticipated Dinagyang Food Festival in various malls and along the streets of the downtown area, sports competitions, art exhibits and cultural activities, light shows and fireworks displays.
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