This Month in BM History: January 1997
Ballet Manila’s free-admission show at the Quezon Circle was announced in a Manila Bulletin photo caption featuring principal dancers Osias Barroso Jr. and Lisa Macuja. Clipping from the Ballet Manila Archives collection
As a company that aimed to bring ballet to the people, the two-year-old Ballet Manila was fortunate to be invited to various venues to perform.
In 1997, the Quezon City Parks Development Foundation, Inc., with the assistance of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, hosted the group to hold a free-admission show at the Liwasang Aurora located inside Quezon Circle on January 26. It was part of the foundation’s Sunday Evenings at the Circle series.
The venue was not the typical theater usually associated with ballet, but then, since its inception in 1995, the group had been used to dancing in unusual spots including town plazas, cockpits and even improvised stages.
In the outdoor setting that was Liwasang Aurora, Ballet Manila treated the audience to a repertoire made up of classical pas de deux (such as those from Don Quixote, Sleeping Beauty and Le Corsaire), a humorous piece danced to the novelty song Butsikik which was always a crowd favorite, and other Filipino choreographies.
The program was a simple, mimeographed one that listed nine numbers, capped by a grand finale. Souvenir program from the Ballet Manila Archives collection