World City Guide

Culture

The rich and highly seasoned broth of Philippine popular culture has not always transferred into equally striking manifestations among the cultural elite, most of whom are highly Westernised. The generally high level of education among the middle classes means that the arts enjoy a more informed and cosmopolitan public than in many developing nations, especially for dance.

The Cultural Center of the Philippines, CCP Building, CCP Complex, Roxas Boulevard, Pasay City (tel: (02) 832 1125; website: www.culturalcenter.gov.ph), is the temple for many of the high arts. It was a pet project of Imelda Marcos and, in true Pharaonic style, supposedly contains the bodies of workers buried in cement as its builders raced to meet her deadlines. It also is the nearest thing Manila has to a central ticketing agency for most of the arts. The National Commission for Culture and the Arts, 633 General Luna Street, Intramuros (tel: (02) 527 2192; website: www.ncca.gov.ph), is the modern national steering body that promotes Philippines arts and culture.

The Manila Bulletin City Guide (website: www.mb.com.ph) and ClickTheCity (website: www.clickthecity.com) are the best sources for listings in Manila. Further listings can be found online at www.manilaguide.com and www.yehey.com.

Music: The Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra (tel: (02) 832 1120), resident company of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, CCP Building, CCP Complex, Roxas Boulevard, Pasay City (tel: (02) 832 1125; website: www.culturalcenter.gov.ph), is the chief classical ensemble. The Philippine Chamber Choir has grown to a choral force of considerable stature. Open-air classical recitals are particularly popular, taking place within Intramuros, in Paco Park or at Rizal Park Amphitheater, in Rizal Park (tel: (02) 535 3353).

Theatre: Dulaang Talyer (tel: (02) 115 6786; website: www.dulaangtalyer.org) is a top contemporary and avant-garde company, based in Quezon City. The Cultural Center of the Philippines (see Music above) plays to the very highest level of the repertoire, with Tanghalang Pilipino as its resident company and the Folk Arts Theater (tel: (02) 832 1120) within the same complex, preserving and interpreting traditional dramas. The William J Shaw Theater on the fifth floor of the Shangri-La Plaza, Mandaluyong (tel: (02) 633 4821/7851), has comedies and more serious fare. Intramuros has its own theatre company and theatre, the Rajah Sulayman Theatre, Fort Santiago (tel: (02) 410 0821 or 724 9637). Open-air events take place at the Rizal Park Ampitheater (see Music above).

Dance: With dance featuring highly in many of the Philippines’ cultural traditions, it is no surprise that ballet and performance arts are one of the major cultural exports. Ballet Philippines (tel: (02) 832 6011; website: www.ballet.com.ph) is the top national troupe for classical and modern repertoire and interpretations of local traditions. Ballet Philippines, the Philippine Ballet Theatre and the Bayanihan Philippine National Folk Dance Company are all resident at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (see Music). The Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group (tel: (02) 831 0894) also resident, is a major exponent of traditional dance. AC DanzMove is the resident dance troupe of Assumption College, Makati City (tel: (02) 894 2678).

Film: The Philippines has an active film industry, producing mostly predictably sentimental and violent fare. Former president José Estrada started his career as a matinee idol before moving on to the political stage – it is difficult to know whether this says more about Philippine film or Philippine politics. Film buffs will always remember that Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) was shot in the Philippines, with Marcos furnishing the helicopters for the famous ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ air cavalry charge. Less well known is the fact that Peter Weir’s The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) used Manila for Jakarta, instead of Saigon.

Shangri-La Cinema, at the Shangri-La Plaza, on the corner of Shaw Boulevard and EDSA, Mandaluyong City (tel: (02) 633 7851), and SM Megamall, EDSA, Ortigas Center, Mandaluyong (tel: (02) 633 1901 or 632 9408), are major multiplex cinema venues. More intellectual venues can be found in Santa Cruz, around the junction of CM Recto Avenue and Rizal Avenue, or in Paco on Pedro Gil Street.

Cultural Events: National Arts Month, in February, is an important annual arts festival that takes place at various venues in Manila. Around the same time, the Bamboo Organ Festival, at Las Piñas Village, near Manila, takes place in the second week of February every year, bringing the world’s foremost organists to this charming small town. The Manila Film Festival, in June, is arranged to coincide with the foundation celebrations of the city on 24 June, to give celebrants a chance to see their favourite stars.

Literary Notes: Manila has found literary favour, as befits a nation whose founding martyr, José Rizal, was a novelist. Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere or Touch Me Not (1887) established modern Philippine literature and is a key work in the evolution of the modern national consciousness. His El Filibusterismo or Subversion (1891) is even more explicit in its dissection of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines. His successors, however, remain mostly unknown to an outside audience.

British writers have contributed some of the best recent interpretations of Manila. James Hamilton-Paterson has published Ghosts of Manila (1994), a tale of horrible goings-on in the twilight of the Marcos era, thinly fictionalised from real events. James Fenton showed up in Manila for the last act of the Marcos soap opera – his memoir, The Snap Revolution (1986), captures the occasion, albeit from an arguably patronising and leftist perspective. Corazon Aquino and the Brushfire Revolution (1995), by Robert Reid and Eileen Guerrero, interprets the events differently but also with a jaded eye. William Boyd used Manila in 1902, as the backdrop for his The Blue Afternoon (1997), while Timothy Mo’s Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard (1995) makes a great play of Manila’s once notorious electricity outages, weaving them with more than a whiff of scatology. A Short History of the Philippines (1969), by Teodoro Agoncillo, is probably the best work to cover its brief.