Flower girls

The month of flowers is here once more! With summer in full swing, expect blossoms of all colors and varieties to brighten the hot and humid season. In what has become an annual tradition for us at the Ballet Manila Archives, we celebrate Flores de Mayo with a showcase of floral-focused scenes at the ballet!

Giselle (Lisa Macuja Elizalde) makes an offering of lilies to Myrtha (Zaira Cosico) in Giselle (2010) as she begs the queen of the wilis – spirits of girls who were wronged by men – to spare her beloved Albrecht’s life. Photo by Ocs Alvarez

The white rose that Violetta (Abigail Oliveiro, left) clutches in her hand symbolizes the passion that Alfredo (Mark Sumaylo, back) has expressed for her in Lisa Macuja Elizalde’s La Traviata, performed in Ballet Manila’s Greatest Hits in Malaysia (2024). But that love will be tested to the limits as one predicament after another faces the star-crossed couple in the ballet adaptation of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera. Photo by Giselle P. Kasilag

With flowers on her headdress and accenting her green tutu, Tiera (Dawna Reign Mangahas) is every inch the earth fairy in Hazel Sabas-Gower’s Sinderela (2012). Tiera communes with the garden spirits in answer to the summons of Tita Nia, the fairy godmother who is helping Sinderela prepare for an audition that could change her life. Photo by Ocs Alvarez

Floral crowns complete the look of these otherworldly sylphs in Mikhail Fokine’s Les Sylphides which is also called Chopiniana, one-half of the double-bill Deux (2019). Known as a technically demanding piece, the non-narrative white ballet features a lone male poet and the woodland spirits dancing to music by Frederic Chopin on a moonlit night. Photo by Ian Santos

A profusion of pink flowers adorns the white tutus of four ladies (Joan Emery Sia, Jasmine Pia Dames, Tiffany Chiang and Jessa Balote) cast in Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s appropriately titled Bloom, as presented in BM 21 (2016). Their skirts also mimic the shape of inverted flowers, in keeping with the choreography’s theme. Photo by Kurt Alvarez

Village girl Giselle (Renata Shakirova, left) joins her friends who have just been out in the fields gathering flowers in this scene from Giselle (2024). The day is full of joy and lightness, in contrast to what is to happen as the story unfolds. Photo by Giselle P. Kasilag

The Jester (Elpidio Magat) presents a rose to one of the two court ladies (Yanti Marduli) he has just danced with in Swan Lake (2011). The pas de trois variation in Act 1 is performed for Prince Siegfried’s coming-of-age festivities. Photo by Ocs Alvarez