Three of a Kind: They’ve got mail

They say that good things come in threes and the Ballet Manila Archives wholeheartedly agrees! In this series, we feature three photos or videos with the same theme that celebrate the history of ballet, the company, and its dancers.

Before the era of the Internet and e-mail, communication came in the form of missives handwritten on paper, perhaps sealed with wax and sent through a personal courier or in later times, some form of delivery service. With the global observance of International Letter-Writing Week which includes World Post Day on October 9, we focus on the traditional mode of correspondence as exemplified in three of Ballet Manila’s productions.

Aladin (Noah Esplana) is summoned by his father Sultan Ali-Adab to return to their kingdom in a letter sent to him in the midst of battle. It is actually a ploy by Ali-Adab to frame his son for his supposed failure in defeating Florante’s forces in Albania so he can steal Aladin’s fiancée, Flerida, for himself. The deception is part of the story of Florante at Laura, the Filipino literary classic adapted into ballet for the first time by Gerardo Francisco Jr. and Martin Lawrance in 2024. Photo by Giselle P. Kasilag

The soldier Don Jose (Osias Barroso Jr.) reads a letter from his mother in a scene from Eric V. Cruz’s Carmen, based on Georges Bizet’s opera. His mother is asking him to return home, urging him to marry Micaela who has hand-delivered the letter to him. But his attention has been drawn elsewhere, to the gypsy Carmen who has just flirted with him. When she later gets into a fight with another woman, Carmen enters Don Jose’s orbit once more when he arrests her. Photo by Ocs Alvarez

Violetta (Abigail Oliveiro) receives a letter from Giorgio Germont, saying his son Alfredo has learned the truth about her sacrifice to leave him to protect his family’s reputation – and not because she is in love with someone else. The older Germont also writes that Alfredo is on his way to her to ask for her forgiveness, but it is too late for the couple as Violetta is stricken with a terminal illness as signified by the dancing traviatas. The scene is from Lisa Macuja Elizalde’s adaptation of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, La Traviata, which was featured in Ballet Manila’s Greatest Hits in Malaysia (2024). Photo by Giselle P. Kasilag