This past Saturday, Filipinos In Alliance at the University of Illinois-Chicago held their 9th annual Battle of the Bamboo show, an event I’d argue draws the largest Pilipino audience in Chicago, and maybe the entire Midwest. BOTB is an effort to redefine culture for younger Pilipino-American generations. On stage you’ll find 1st generation, 2nd gen, and 3rd gen all working together to put on a great show of Pilipino cultural dance.
Of course, the reason they call it “Battle” is that this is a competition among high school and collegiate Pilipino groups. It’s interesting that as the high school groups have stepped up their games, high school graduates are almost recruited into college groups like basketball prospects. My first time attending was in ‘06, my senior year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It was our first time competing, and while I personally didn’t perform, UIUC took home the crown.
In 2012, UIUC has once again captured the crown with their rendition of “Binaylan-Banog”, a ritual tribal dance imitating a hen protecting her chicks as a hawk attacks. Second place was taken by Ohio State University in their debut as they performed the stick dance “Kawayan”, an Ohio tradition since 1997 (which I first saw in ‘03). Defending champions Loyola placed third with their colorful and energetic portrayal of the “Lembohung Festival.”
You can watch the winning performance below, and view all of our videos at this link
Since BakitWhy.com has covered a few Battles in the past already, I’ll close with some of the notes I took during this year’s competition:
- Battle is always either really loud (school call outs, sticks banging) or really quiet (national anthems, respect for the performers)
- I honestly do not think a school will ever win again with taped music, except maybe for tinikling which has a recognized song. Live music, stick noises, or nothing.
- Interesting how the judges use the word “improvement” in their critiques, when this is the actual competition already. When could they use this advice?
- The devil is in the details, and it pays to research the background of your dance. For example. groups doing Muslim suite dances got dinged for the women wearing clothes that were too short, or having the prince and princess touch. You need to know your culture and history to win.
- Before, I always thought if you didn’t do singkil or vinta, you had no chance in winning. Heck, vinta even won last year. But this year, I’d only ever seen two of the six dances; I consistently see something new.
- Kuratsa may be my favorite new dance. I’d never seen a dude get so into shaking his booty.
- Dear emcees of the world: your job isn’t to entertain for the sake of entertaining. It’s to entertain to kill dead time as groups get off the stage and others get ready. You should move the show along, not drag it out longer.
- After every group’s performance, tradition has been to hold a final pose until all the judges have given their evaluations. This can be a LONG time - sometimes over ten minutes. How do they hold it?
- Related, a time limit needs to be given per judge. Give your thoughts, but let the trophies speak to your final opinions.
- Also related, there should be a member of each team there to cue the judges in on when the performance is actually complete. With all the final posing going on for the judgment, it’s hard to tell.
Can’t wait until next year! Overall great show FIA!
