Among notable performing arts groups that appropriate

traditional performance forms are the Leyte Kalipayan

Dance Company, Rahrah Rousers of Palo, Leyte,
Balinsasayaw Singers of Tanauan, Leyte, U.P. An
Balangaw Performing Arts Group, Odon Sabarre Ballet
Company, Leyte Dance Theater, Eastern Samar National
Comprehensive High School Rondalla and the Kulahig
neo-ethnic band. Educational institutions that lead
in the advancement of the Waray culture in the region
are Holy Infant College and the Leyte Normal
University.

The Leyte Kalipayan Dance Company was founded n 1959

by its Artistic Director and choreographer Miss
Teresita Veloso Pil as a small dance troupe of the
Holy Infant College.

Since then it evolved as a community –based company.

Its repertoire of staged Philippine folk dances ends
with a rural scene depicting the vivacity of the
people and vitality of life in Leyte and Samar. Its
finale is the tinikling dance of the tikling birds in
the rice field which, as noted in Francisca Reyes
Aquino’s Philippine Folk Dance series, originated in
Tanauan, Leyte. The Kalipayan dancers display agile
lightness in their footwork and subtle grace with
their hands. Miss Pil’s choreography and the dancers’
artistic discipline have drawn rave reviews in
international folklore festivals in the U.S., Mexico,
Europe, Middle East Southeast Asia and China.
Washington Post described the troupe as “fresh,
spontaneous and appealing” and a Swiss
criticcommented on the choreography and performance
as “.. finesse a l’extremité (finesse at its finest)”
in La Liberte.

The troupe was awarded the Silver Medal in the

1980 Dijon International Folklore Festival and
continues to enthrall its audiences locally and
abroad. Its performance record has earned for Miss
Pil the 1994 GAWAD SINING for Regional Dance of the
Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Leyte
Heritage Award for Dance from the Province of Leyte
and the Sangyaw Award from the City of Tacloban.
Ms.Pil has trained five generations of dancers from
all over the region and continues to do so. The Leyte
Dance Theater is a community based-dance company
under the artistic direction of Jess De Paz who hails
from Jaro, Leyte. Its dance vocabulary is largely of
modern ballet and jazz but it has neo-ethnic pieces
in the vein of Alice Reyes’ style. De Paz was a
scholar in dance under the tutelage of Alice Reyes in
the 1970s. He has taught ballet and jazz for four
generations of dancers who have treated the Tacloban
audiences with performances ranging from Broadway
musicals to folk ballet portrayals of Waray cultural
life. His choreography of the gabi harvest dance
called gaway-gawayand the mananggiti(tuba gatherer)
dance are playfully festive. Douglas Nierras (whose
roots are in Tacloban) of Power Dance fame as well as
Ballet Philippines’ Alden Lugnasin (of Basey, Samar)
started as De Paz’ dance students. Many of his
dance students now teach dance themselves in schools
in the region and some have become professional
choreographers. The Leyte Dance Theater has performed
in the U.S. and recently in Turkey where they
garnered an award in an international dance festival.
Odon Sabarre’s Leyte-Samar Dance Scholars (LSDS) was
formed in 2002 with young dance enthusiasts whom Odon
Sabarre trained in various genres. Within a year the
group performed in major events in Eastern Visayas
displaying their skills in classic, jazz, modern
interpretation and stylized folk dances. The LSDS
dancers are known for their lightness and technical
acumen. One of the highlights of the LSDS repertoire
is the ballet version of kuratsa.

The LSDS dancers astonished their audience with their

performance of kuratsa en pointe – on their toes and
wearing toe shoes. The LSDS founder, trainer and
director Odon Sabarre hails from Samar. In the 1970s,
Sabarre was the first Filipino scholar to have
trained in Russia as a classical dance scholar of
former First Lady Madame Imelda Romualdez Marcos.
Since the 1970s, he has been teaching dance to poor
elementary and high school students in the provinces
of Leyte and Samar. For more than two decades, this
former danseur of Pittsburg Ballet Theater and New
Jersey Ballet Company has dedicated his life to
honing the dancing skills of raw, fresh talents in
the Leyte Samar region.The Rahrah Rousers started as
a group of neighborhood serenaders and carolers from
Palo, Leyte. None of the group members ever had any
formal music lessons but all of them were gifted with
fine baritone and tenor voices. Prof. Agustin El
O’Mora, a highly esteemed musical genius, formally
organized the group in 1963. In 1981, new and younger
members were recruited including Nestor de Veyra, a
musician andtheater director. Under de Veyra’s
artistic leadership, the group’s repertoire expanded,
their distinctive singing style was honed and their
performance quality improved. As an all-male chorale,
the Rousers’ song repertoire consists of
LineyteSamarnon folk songs with arrangements
whichvary from classical to jazz. They authentically
express the Waray spirit in their soulful harana and
jocund irignum (drinking) songs.

The Balinsasayaw Singers, started in 1971 as a parish

choir in Tanauan, Leyte under the musical direction
of Daniel “Sarge” Basas. They had their first
successful public appearance in 1973 when they
performed in many key cities in the Visayas and
Mindanao. The group assumed the name Balinsasayaw
from a songbird endemic in the region. Their
repertoire consisted of soft and poignant renditions
of Tagalog, Ilocano. Waray and Cebuano love songs.
Since then they became the official entertainers of
Leyte. In 2003 and 2004, with second generation
126 members, they successfully recorded their first
and second CD albums of original and traditional
Waray songs sponsored by the Tanauan local
government. The Waray phrase An Balangaw means “the
rainbow” which refers to the various hues of the
rainbow signifying the different artistic talents and
art forms converging harmoniously to create one
showcase. It also refers to the different
personalities who undergo the discipline of the
performing arts. The U.P. An Balangaw Performing Arts
Groups was founded in 1984 by Prof. Joycie Y. Dorado
Alegre. Its mission is to revive and revitalize
traditional Leyte-Samar performance forms and to
create new and original works. The group is
distinguished for its research and its system of
processing traditional cultural data into
contemporary performance as well as for its aesthetic
interpretation which preserves the integrity of the
folk form. In 1986, the group was awarded as the U.P.
Visayas Most Outstanding Student Organization. In
1995, it received a grant from the National
Commission for Culture and the Arts for the staging
of Kinasingkasing(From the Heart) – a contemporary
and original Waray sarswela written by Samlito
Abueva, music by Jimmy Loro and choreography and
direction by Joycie Y. Dorado Alegre The sarswela
successfully portrayed matweaving and fishing village
life through poetic verse, song and dance. The
Pastores ug Panarit(traditional Waray Christmas drama
on the Shepherds to whom angels announced Jesus’
birth and of Joseph and Mary’s search for an inn )
has been revitalized by the group since 1991. In
2007, the National Youth Commission awarded the group
as One of the Top Five Accomplished Youth Groups in
the Visayas and as national finalist in the Ten Most
Accomplished Youth Organizations in the Philippines.
Recently, it received the U.P.Visayas Performing
Group Award for two consecutive academic years (2007-
2008; 2008-2009).
The Leyte Normal University has been active in Waray
theater productions with the cultural leadership and
direction of Jose Lianza. In 2008, the university
produced a contemporary sarswela on the history and
lore of the Santo Nino Fiesta of Tacloban. The script
was written by Victor N.. Sugbo and the original
music was composed by Rex Makabenta. This was the
first time that the oral history and lore of
Tacloban’s Patron Saint was ever dramatized. This was
on the occasion of the 2008 national heritage month
celebration through a grant from the Province of
Leyte.

For the national arts month celebrations, the Holy

Infant College produced the Tulay han Tulin
(Bridge of Our Ancestral Heritage) Performing Arts
Festival (2006), the Ani ng Sining ng Leyte
(2008) and the An Bugsay ni JaymeChildren’s Musical
Theater (2009). Tulay han Aton Tulin brought together
performing arts groups of traditional and tradition-
based forms from all over the region. An octogenarian
musician, the late Rosario Franco, who played kuratsa
mayor on the piano amazed the youthful audience in
this grand festival. Ten-year-old gifted singer
Rosary Padilla astonished them with her naturally
fine soprano voice in singing Waray folk songs.
Ani ng Sining ng Leytehighlighted the environmental
conservation theme and other millennium development
goals embedded in the folk songs and dances of
various participating groups from Tacloban and nearby
towns. An Bugsay ni Jayme(Jayme’s Paddle) was a
spectacular production with children dancing as
fishes, jellyfish, stingrays, turtles, octopuses,
sharks, whales, mermaids and elves in the fantastic
worlds of the sea and of Glaya, the diwata (nature
spirit)guardian of humanity’s livelihood implements..
It was a story of a Jayme, a fisher boy, who found
the elf Badul’s magic paddle which changed life in
his community. Script, choreography and direction was
by Joycie Y. Dorado Alegre, drama assistant direction
by Ives Bajas and Jet Cañanes, musical direction by
Marian Alapit and Jet Cañanes, set design by Arceli
Cerro and Rex Diaz, and costume design by Marian Al
apit and Jocelyn Dorado. Eastern Samar National
Comprehensive High School (ESNCHS) Rondalla of
Borongan, Eastern Samar is a relatively young group.
But in so short a time its story has become one of
the school’s pride. The group consistently reaps
laurels for Eastern Samar province. Organized only in
2002, the group has already joined the National
Music Competition for Young Artists as national
finalist being the regional champion. In the later
year, it was also featured as one of the region’s
best in the WOW! Philippines National Tourism and
Trade Fair. Under the baton of Angela Villasin, a
B.S. Music Education graduate ofthe Holy Infant
College in Tacloban City, the group continues to work
out a repertoire of Waray folk songs so they would
live on.
Kulahig is a group of local artists in Tacloban bound
by their love for nature, their people, culture and
country expressed through Philippine ethnic music.
Dante Enage leads the group as they create original
rhythmic pieces in Waray with chants and Philippine
bamboo instruments from various communities such as
the bungkaka(Mangyan cracker), gabbang (Maranaw) and
the kubing (bamboo Jew’s harp) . The group recently
produced a CD music video that won in the U.P.
Largabista short film competition. With the members’
earnest dedication to uplift the Waray culture, they
have done series of shows in the region and in other
parts of the Philippines. In 2003 they were among
other artists in the Philippines who participated in
the Maharlika Arts Festival of Boracay, Aklan. They
sing of the river and sea, the flora and fauna -- of
Mother Earth’s blessings. As a neo-ethnic band, the
Kulahig members are gently disciplined in their
search for the possibilities of Waray music for the
present generation. Contemporary performance of the
Waray traditional and the tradition-based forms
connects present performers and audiences to their
past and leads them into the future. The old and the
new meet. The continuing tradition of the old finds
new pulses, beats, steps and gestures as they are
performed by the young of this generation. There are
exciting juxtapositions and fusions of the
traditional, tradition-based, contemporary and
perhaps futuristic visions. The matrix of unity is in
their roots – their history and inspirations, the
sources of artistic imagination.