MAY MALAS SA LOOB, PERO MAY DATATING PA (2018) Work Up 4.2: Babay L. Angles from Gibney on Vimeo. May Malas Sa Loob, Pero May Datating Pa (There is wickedness within, but there is something more to come.
New York, NY 2018 This work was developed and supported by Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative and Gibney Dance 4.0 in New York, NY from 2017 - 2018. This multi-disciplinary performance ritual featured movement, sound, lighting, and installation directed and performed by Babay L. Angles. This ritual performance excavates the horrors and pains of my specific fragmented and maladaptive Pinay psyche in its process of decolonization. I am continually asking, where am I from, what/who am I fighting, and from where can I draw strength as a Pinay? My family is from Olongapo, Philippines. I grew up in San Diego, CA and Okinawa, Japan. I created ritual and movement to reflect on the ancestral memory of these heavily militarized spaces where the Pilipinx body was maimed, manipulated, policed and sexualized. I am reflecting on the ways Pilipinx continue to hold a mind numbing colonial mentality and historical amnesia as reflected in the hours of horror on TV looped and streamed in our homes displaying game shows filled with women shaking their clad hips as the poor are put on TV to dance and sing to American pop songs. I ask where do we draw strength? I am fascinated with the ways, despite this colonial mentality, we resist through legend, myth, horror, and remix. The Aswang was a legend created by Spanish Colonizers to control the Pilipinx population and destroy strong feminine leaders within Pilipinx pre-colonial society. She is a shape-shifting mythical creature who will eat your children and bring bad luck if you are “sinner.” She is still very much present on Pilipinx TV today, many people providing first hand accounts of being possessed by her. How can we use this “malas,” this fighting spirit that continues to live within us, to disrupt the horrors, shame, chaos, and homelessness of our experience, and simultaneously decolonize the psyche and put the Self back together again? Questions for community exploration: What are myths and legends that exist in your family? How do they invoke fear and strength? How can Pilipinx resist colonial mentality and historical amnesia within the context of the United States? How can the abilities to remix, adapt, and mimic be sources of resistance? What cross cultural connections can be built from excavating the Pilipinx colonial experience? |