2005 – Noon po sa Amin

I. PRE-COLONIAL PHILIPPINES
Family System
Early Man
Fire
Basic Needs
Script
Trade and Commerce
Religion Government

II. AGE OF TRADE AND CONTACT
Chinese and Arab Traders
Barter of Panay
Coming of Islam

III.DAYS OF THE CONQUISTADORS
Magellan’s Cross and Death
Legaspi, The Adelantado
Chinese Uprising
Arrival of Missions
Untouched Groups
British Invasion
Tertulia
Diego Silang 1762
Galleon Trade

IV.PERIOD OF ARMED STRUGGLE
Sariling Bayan
Bayan Ko Gomburza
Jose Rizal Katipunan
1892 Philippine Independence

V.AMERICAN INTERVENTION
Thomasites

VI. FIRSTS AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
Carnival Queen
Commonwealth

VII. JAPANESE REGIME

VIII. REBUILDING THE NATION

IX. OUR NEIGHBORS
United Nations
Association of South East Asian Nations

Cultural Center of the Philippines
The Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group
a historical travelogue of the Philippines
from early man to the revolution to the United Nations..
Tanghalang Nicanor Abelardo (CCP Main Theater) 8PM July 29, 2005 ” 3PM July 30 & 31, 2005

Cultural Center of the Philippines
Message
Of all the arts, none remains as rooted in ritual as dance. The Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) thus sets the stage once more for the Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group (ROFG), as it unfolds an armchair travelogue of Philippine history in diverse art forms in tonight s show entitled Noon Po Sa Amin.

For more than three decades, the group has dramatized, through dance, the most essential and indispensable facets of our history that mirror the traditional culture of the Filipinos. Weaving into its dance repertoire an amalgamation of rich ethnic traditions and lore, accentuated by the company s engaging and intricate steps that capture the original movements and rituals of our country s indigenous peoples, ROFG has successfully created its very own niche in the world of dance.

Tonight s performance, will not merely put our audience in an artistic bliss, but interestingly draw familiarity from educators and admirers of history, social science, sociology, anthropology, and other academic disciplines as the group stages a truthful rendition of our past through dance.

The numerous accolades garnered by ROFG here and abroad deserve our warmest commendations. Truly, the company personifies great artistry that emanates from the heart, and stirs our innermost sentiments, and deep appreciation of our innate and distinctive Filipino traditions and cultural heritage.
Mabuhay kayong lahat!

NESTORO. JARDIN
Presidente

FERNANDO C. JOSEF
Vice President and Artistic Director
MESSAGE
Ang Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group, kilala sa kanilang maraming taong ginugol sa pananaliksik, pagsusulat at pamamahagi ng mahahalagang aspeto ng kultura at tradisyong Pilipino, kasama na ang musika, sayaw at ritwal ay kumilos patungo sa kakaibang antas ng pagtatanghal sa pamamagitan ng “Noon po sa Amin”.

Ang “Noon po sa Amin” ay isang pagbabalik-tanaw sa ating nakaraan, sa buhay-buhay ng mga unang Pilipino, mga mahahalaga at makukulay na kaganapan sa ating kasaysayan, mga pakikihamok, tagumpay at pagsulong tungo sa kaunlaran at kalayaan ng ating bayan.

Ang “Noon po sa Amin” ay pinaglaanan ng mahabang panahong pananaliksik, pag-aaral, pagninilay at pagkonsulta sa maraming aklat at mga makabuluhang babasahin.

Taas-noo naming inihahandog ang “Noon po sa Amin” ng buong pagmamalaki at makabayang damdamin!

Hayaan ninyong samahan kayo ng ROFG sa landas ng nakaraan at balikan ang mga natatanging pangyayari sa kasaysayan ng ating mahal na bayan…

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! Mabuhay tayong lahat!

RAMON A. OBUSAN
Artistic Director

Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group

The Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group (ROFG) celebrates its 33 years of preservation and perpetuation of Philippine traditions with special emphasis on music and dance.

Founded in 1972, the ROFG started as a fledgling folk dance company, composed of some thirty performers. Leaning on the vast amount of data and artifacts that he has accumulated while he was doing researches, Ramon A. Obusan thought of starting a dance company that will mirror the traditional culture of the Filipinos through dance and music.

For over thirty years, the ROFG has created a niche in the world of dance as forerunner of Philippine folk dance performed closest to the original. Boasting of over a thousand performances in the Philippines and abroad, the ROFG is one of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ leading resident companies since 1986.
Under the able leadership of its founder and Artistic Director, Choreographer and Researcher Ramon A. Obusan, it has so far gone on three successful European tours to 13 countries including Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, France, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, Spain and Austria in 1987, 1990 and 1993.

In the 8th Hong Kong Festival of Asian Arts 1983, critics showered the ROFG with praises describing it as the stuff an arts festival should be made of. Three years later in the 1986 Expo in Canada, its 21 shows ended in 21 standing ovations. In 1992, the group was the first Filipino performing artist to receive resounding applause and standing ovations for all its performances in Japan under the auspices of Min-On. The group had its first extensive American Tour in 1994 visiting 16 states capped with a proclamation of February 8 as ROFG Day in Cleveland, Ohio.
In Asia, the group represented the Philippines in various dance festivals and conferences as cultural ambassadors. Along with this, Mr. Obusan was chosen as Artistic Director of the first Joint ASEAN Performing Troupe in 1991 and the ROFG as the official Philippine representative. In 1994, it was the only Filipino company asked to perform for six months at the ASEAN Village in Sentosa, Singapore, performing not only Philippine dances but dances of other Asian countries as well. In 1995, the ROFG helped raise HK1.5M for OCW’s in Hong Kong when they performed for a fund-raising event sponsored by the Hong Kong Bayanihan Trust.

April and May 1996 saw the group in Paris, Turkey, Greece and Sweden for a series of performances under the auspices of the Department of Tourism. In May 1998, the company performed at the Lisboa

Exposition ’98 in Portugal as part of the Philippine Centennial Celebration and in 1999 the group returned to Japan for the Philippine Independence Day celebration through the invitation of the Embassy. In the year 2000, the company received the ASEAN Travel Award for Cultural Preservation in the tourism congress in Thailand besting other contenders. In 2001, the company traveled to South Korea, London, U.S.A., and Baghdad, Iraq for a series of special performances. It was also awarded the Sining Kalinangan Award of the City of Manila as outstanding folk dance company in the same year.

2002 year-ender saw the ROFG in the Prince Hotel’s Philippine Food Festival in Hong Kong for three successful days. Another 3 weeks was spent in Qatar’s First Winter Festival.

Through steep international recognition, the ROFG has never forgotten the people who are the very source of its pride. For the past two decades, it has documented and performed the rituals of more than 50 ethnolinguistic groups in the country. With more than twenty outstanding full-length Filipino dance works, among which are the memorable suites from the Cordillera, Bagobo, T’boli, Tausug, Maranao, the Aeta and the Talaandig, among others, the ROFG has served to highlight the authenticity of the movements and costumes of these people.

Today, the ROFG humbly celebrates 33 years of fruitful existence and service to the Filipino people. To the ROFG, there is no stopping in the pursuit of recording and staging of the fast fading Filipino traditions.

Ramon Arevalo Obusan

Choreographer, dancer, scholar and researcher. The son of Praxedes Obusan, a physician, and Josefina Arevalo, a music teacher, he went to the University of the Philippines for degrees in fisheries technology and cultural anthropology. He taught for several years at the Aklan National School of Fisheries, and then became a dancer, performer and researcher of the Bayanihan Philippine Dance Company from 1964 to 1972.

In 1972, he founded the Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group, and has since choreographed and directed for some 65 dance groups and over 100 productions nationwide: dance, pageants, festivals, special events, competitions, exhibits, television, movies and video-films.

His productions include the full length presentations, notable are Kayaw ’68 and Kayaw ’74, Maynila Isang Dakilang Kasaysayan (Manila Its Noble Story), Kaamulan (Gathering), Noon Po Sa Amin (The Way it Was), Sayaw: Handog ng Pilipino sa Mundo (Dance: Filipino’s Gift to the World), Ritwal (Ritual), Under the ASEAN Sky, Glimpses of ASEAN, Philippine Festivals, Tausug Tapestry and Rare and Unpublished Dances of the Philippines series. He has collaborated in various film projects, among them American Ninja, Banawe, Hubad na Gubat (Naked Forest), the King and the Emperor, Maligayang Pasko (Merry Christmas), Noli Me Tangere, Waywaya and Rizal. His own group has joined international festivals and expositions in over 30 countries since 1974. It has also toured the Philippines extensively.

Through the years, Ramon Obusan has studied and documented the indigenous culture of Philippine ethnic groups from north to south, focusing on rites and traditions. Proof of these life works of over three decades is a compilation of over 200 audio and video-documentation of his researches as well as a collection of museum artifacts. He has also done research on the Polynesian culture of Fiji,

Samoa, Tahiti and New Zealand, and given lectures, demonstrations and workshops worldwide. Obusan tries to keep his folk dance presentations authentic by using actual movement patterns, costumes and music even as dances go on-stage.

Two documentaries he directed for the CCP Tuklas Sining series won awards in France: grand prize, Prix de Reportage for Sayaw, 1990, and Special Mention in Russia, Grand Prix International VideoDance, 1992, for Philippine Ethnic Dance. A consultant for UNESCO, he has been cited for his achievements in research, conferences, workshops and presentations. He was given the Patnubay ng Kalinangan award by the City of Manila in 1992 and the Gawad CCP Para sa Sining Sayaw in 1993.

He has actively worked as a member of the Executive Committee of the Philippine Folk Dance Society, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts since 1987. He was consultant and co-director of the 1998 Centennial Parade Celebration. He was cocurator and program director of Pahiyas: A Philippine Folk Festival, the Philippine participation to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington D.C., U.S.A. in July 1998. In 1999, he was one of the 100 artist awarded in the CCP Centennial Honors for the Arts.

PRE-COLONIAL PHILIPPINES
Even before the history of the Philippines was written, we were here, with a government, an economy, our own life. The pre-historic, precolonial Filipino was quite capable of sustaining himself. He had a vast amount of resources around him in his environment, within him, in his mind, body and spirit. He had a long period to learn how to use these resources.

AGE OF TRADE AND CONTACT
From early on, there was trading, not only in nearby places or islands. Everyone had access to everything they needed or wanted. Traders were able to travel by boat from island to island, plying their trade as far as the kingdom that existed along the rivers and seas in the archipelago and to other lands beyond ours.

DAYS OF THE CONQUISTADORS
Spain would prove herself to be a major character in Philippine history. Ferdinand Magellan arrived in Samar with over 250 men in five galleons. He named the island Saint Lazarus de Archipelago which later became I slas Las Filipinas when Ruy Lopez de Villalobos renamed it in honor of the Crown Prince Philip II. On March 31, 1521, the first Mass in the Philippines was said. Magellan planted the wooden cross and claimed the land for Spain.

PERIOD OF ARMEÐ STRUGGLE
The day of uprising came. The day to fight the Spaniards finally came. No arms except his own body. No ammunition except his desire to gain independence. Nationalistic songs express the Filipinos sentiment during the period of armed struggle.

AMERICAN INTERVENTION
The Americans had been riding on a dream: their Manifest Destiny of building their own empire. The Philippines was part of that empire. So entered the benevolent assimilation proclamation that was made by President William McKinley some three years earlier. The Americans were here to stay, being big brothers to the natives.

A step in the plans of conquest included the re-education of the Filipinos in the ways of their American friends. On the 23rd of June, 1901, the first batch of teachers from the USA arrived on board the transport ship Thomas.

FIRSTS AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
Things began to happen in the country. American progressiveness dawned with the new century — introducing the Filipinos to a lot of firsts: first sewing machine, first hotel, first newspaper, etc.

JAPANESE REGIMEN
December 8, 1941, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The first bomb of World War II fell. The start of the new year was also the start of a new ordeal for the Filipino people. The Japanese came with a dream of conquest, bullets for whoever refused. Allied soldiers gathered in Manila on the second day of 1942. This was the day Manila was destroyed.

REBUILDING THE NATION
On the morning of February 4, 1945, residents of Manila woke up to find the American flag flying once again from the pole of the Malacañang Palace. The crowd sang God Bless America and, at noon, had the last bodies of Japanese soldiers burning on a vacant lot in San Rafael. Cries of Hi Joe, and Victory Joe rang all over the streets. Milk, sugar and beer flowered the celebration. Liberation had come, even if only to half of Manila, as the remaining Japanese holed up in the southern part of the city went on a killing and raping rampage.

OUR NEIGHBORS
Soon in 1945, the Philippines became one of the founding member countries of the United Nations — an alliance that fostered peace amongst nations, promoted free and fair elections, giving way to viable democratic institutions. The United Nations and its agencies have been an indefatigable voice for the poor and the disadvantaged — bringing humanitarian assistance to millions of people around the world and empowering millions more by advancing their social and economic development.

As the country moved towards progress, international relations became necessary for the economy as well as the security of the nation. The Association of South East Asian Nations came into being after the Bangkok declaration on August 9, 1967. It was decided by the countries that comprised Southeast Asia then, namely: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and later on, Brunei Darussalam, and most recently, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and East Timor — that a regional organization would bring mutual benefits and heighten solidarity through regional cooperation, from putting their activities in place to looking outside and at their neighbors not as intruders or enemies but as brothers and friends who help and need help. The Philippines has learned, at last, to master herself and has taken her rightful place in her region and in the world.

PERFORMERS
RAMON OBUSAN FOLKLORIC GROUP
Cherry Ylanan ” Marciano T. Viri
Christine Carol Singson ” Sergio Anlocotan
Sharon Lira “Allan Villocino
Marie Ruby Ocampo ” Ronaldo Mendoza
Kanami Namiki ” Reynaldo Avendano
Joana Patric Usana ” Jhunnard Jhordan Cruz
Jessielyn Tiaba ” Alvin Cano
Mila Reyna Rivera” Christopher Perez
Myrna Verecio ” Michael Bayani
Ronald Asuncion ” Mark Angelo Ferreras
Romeo Medina ” Joey Fungan

ROFG JUNIOR RONDALLA
Christine Laura Singson ” Jose Roel Oga
Shyme Jeremy Arellano ” Mark Roy Magaling
Anne Lloraine Medina ” Michael Angelo Medina
Shiela May Delalamon ” Luke Anthony Singson
Mary Grace Magaling ” Genesis Amolo
Faye Tancinco ” Jairus Roger Oliveros
Julie Anne Casem ” Mark Jophet Dato
Marie Anthonette Rebanal ” Ron Bryan Ramirez
Ma. Patricia Loren Velasco ” Frankline Robers
Paula Margaret Ferreras ” Rigor Reaño
Christine Marie Parato ” Maria Diana Dole Donaire

MGA ANAK NI INANG DAIGDIG (SMOKEY MOUNTAIN)
Jessa Enriquez ” Dandel Espeña
Diane Angelic Pido ” Richard Signo Rechelle Signo “
Amante Villacorta Revelene Ruth Balaoro “
Jonathan Domingo Jellica Villacorta “
Louisito Legaspi Isabel Desbaro “
Mark Allan Ferreras Nweme Gajunera “
Allan Christopher Mangahas Norielyn Quilloy
“Arnold Zamora Armie Zamora “
Roque Lacibal Alonah Villacorta

CENTRO ESCOLAR UNIVERSITY FOLK DANCE TROUPE
Dulce Imelda Amor de Guzman
Joseph Jansen Aragon
Everly Grace Aspi “
Alvin Roy Ramos
Ma. Charisma Bernardo “
Henry dela Cruz
Bernadette Diswe”
Gian Carlo Antonio
Shiela Marie Llorante “
Ma. Christina Sy

PRODUCTION STAFF
RAMON A. OBUSAN
Artistic Director, Choreographer and Researcher

SONNY PEROCHO
PATDAT/OISTAT Technical Director and Lighting Designer

RICARDO G. CRUZ
PATDAT/OISTAT Production Designer/Consultant

MARCIANO T. VIRI
CHERRY A. YLANAN
Dance Directors

DENNIS JULIO Y. TAN
Artistic Consultant

ORLANDO OCAMPO
Music Director

MARCIANO T. VIRI & KIKAY
Marketing & Tickets Coordinators

MARCIANO T. VIRI
JOEY FUNGAN
Music Coordinators

SANDIE M. JAVIER
Poster and Program Lay-out Artist

KIKAY
Production & Stage Manager

NELSON ESPEJO
Rondalla Master ROFG Junior Rondalla

VIC MAASLOM
BENJIE FILOMENO
AVP Coordinators

EMELITA MEDINA
Costume Mistress/Finance Officer

JUN CABANGON
AVP Editor and Technical Director

CHRISTOPHER VELASCO
ROMEO MEDINA
TEODORO RAMIREZ
Props Coordinators

CCP CULTURAL PROMOTIONS DIVISION Video Documentation

acknowledgements

The RAMON OBUSAN FOLKLORIC GROUP
would like to thank the following:
Joana Landrito Golden Arches Development Corporation
McDonald’s
St. Scholastica’s College of Manila
La Concordia College
Ms. Myrna Verecio
Mr. Nelson Espejo
Centro Escolar University
Hwa-yi Ethnic Dance Company
Sacred Heart School of Parañaque
Ms. Sonia Obusan Menor
Mr. Nestor Islas & Ms. Iris Obusan Isla
National Commission for Culture and the Arts
Mr. Nestor O. Jardin
3 Dr. Larry Gabao
Department of Tourism, Pasay City
Ms. Mina Gabor
CCP Cultural Promotions Division Mayor Wenceslao Trinidad
Ms. Elvira Go
Ms. Peggy Sangco Chairman Charlie Chavez