Quarantine creativity: Abigail Oliveiro and Mark Sumaylo step into a collaborative pointe-shoe project
(Fifth of a series)
For people so used to expressing themselves through dance and movement in a spacious studio, the enhanced community quarantine can be a soul-crushing experience. Being in a confined space day after day and unable to do their daily class and rehearsals can indeed be challenging. But fortunately, Ballet Manila’s dancers are finding ways to improvise on their fitness regimen while also filling their time with creative alternatives. This series reveals what some of these artists have been up to in lockdown mode.
By Susan A. De Guzman
For Ballet Manila principal dancers and sweethearts Mark Sumaylo and Abigail Oliveiro, decluttering the place they share was the initial goal with the vast amount of time they suddenly had on their hands. Little did they realize that it would spark a project that has now been occupying their hours and also challenging their creativity while on community quarantine.
The inspiration was a pile of Abi’s “dead” pointe shoes which she hadn’t gotten to disposing as she still had to get the ribbons off them. She had always wanted to do something with her discarded ballet pairs but just never had the time or the inclination to explore the notion. Now she had no excuse.
Her first thought was to try painting the shoes. Since they didn’t have paint or art supplies on hand, however, she tried using cosmetics instead – specifically, eyeshadow, that she could apply with excess makeup brushes.
Used pointe shoes spark inspiration for Ballet Manila principal dancers Abigail Oliveiro and Mark Sumaylo’s collaborative project. This pair has a Swan Lake motif and is painted and embellished with feathers and sequins. Photo by MarBi Photography
“I'm not a good artist at all but I've always loved painting and watching colors being painted across a canvas. That was all I could ever ‘paint’. So I had no expectations and was just excited to throw on colors to my pointe shoes. I'm not someone who plays with makeup too much either and was much more interested on using it on my shoes than my face.”
Abi then recounts how Mark soon got into the act. “He suggested that he could also practice his photography. But since majority of his equipment wasn't with him and was kept in storage elsewhere, he saw this as a challenge to get creative using what he had. And thus, a project was born.”
The initial pieces for their pointe-shoe project were dictated by the colors of the shoes that Abi had danced with recently – a white pair from Carmina Burana and a black pair from Sleeping Beauty. “I really wanted the white pair to be Swan Lake-inspired. I just kept feeling peace and calm and we also found some white feathers from a bag of scraps when we would do dress-ups for our Christmas party. So I thought perhaps the black could be the opposite and have something to do with fire.”
But being the cautious one, Mark insisted that Abi practice first before attempting anything on the white and black pairs. Thus, taking a flesh-toned pair, Abi decided they could go for a unifying motif focusing on the elements of nature for each (Earth, Water/ Air, Fire).
“So the first pair started with a rose and I asked Mark if he could draw vines because I could barely tackle the rose and he’s a far better artist than I am. And it turned out we really liked the experimental pair and proceeded to shoot that first.”
Mark and Abi work well together not just on stage but off it, complementing each other’s talents and abilities. Establishing a part-time enterprise called MarBi Photography (a contraction of their names), they are the pair behind Ballet Dictionary, a long-running series on ballet vocabulary that appears in the Ballet Manila Archives website. Mark takes the photographs of Ballet Manila dancers demonstrating steps and terms while Abi assists him during pictorials, works on post-shoot edits and writes the text.
Abi models the Earth-inspired pointe-shoe pair she and Mark worked on with a design of roses and vines that extend to her legs in this photograph. Photo by MarBi Photography
The collaboration continues with their current pointe-shoe project. Abi notes, “We both take turns in contributing to it so it's hard to say who does what exactly. We'll pitch in the ideas we have and then discuss with each other what the best way to express the idea would be. But Mark definitely is the creative director of the shoot and I'm the one who wears the shoes. It's not the most comfortable thing! Sometimes the shoes have been glued way too many times from gluing things on to them so the material is very stiff or the inside of the shoe has leftover glue that dried funny from when they were previously worn.”
So far, they’re satisfied with the progress they’re making that often, the hours just fly by for them. “It keeps our brains working and the time passes so quickly! It also keeps us excited to keep it evolving. So the shoe would be out drying on the table and it's happened where we would wake up in the morning or just walk pass it and have a stroke of inspiration to add something to it, adjust it or just slather more paint on it. No pressure or anything. It's just a joy!” Abi shares.
She and Mark agree that their newfound project is something they would like to continue even when the quarantine is over. “For sure! We're making it a bit more personal now and coming up with ways we can actually use it to ‘decorate’ our house. But we're almost out of shoes so hopefully when the next season rolls around, we'll be more equipped!”
