Dance Xchange targets Guinness record for biggest song and dance contingent

By Emme Rose Santiagudo

The International Dance Xchange Workshop and Festival, which will be held in Iloilo for the first time, will attempt a Guinness record for the category of the biggest number of song and dance contingent in a single place.

This will be the highlight of the International Dance Xchange that will feature 10,000 participants for unity song and dance number in Pototan, Iloilo on May 2, 2020.

“We are trying to beat the 5,000 participants of a dance performance in England. We wanted to put a lot more, so we decided that our attempt will be a song and dance performance for peace and unity,” Dr. Shirley Halili-Cruz head of the National Dance Committee of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) said Saturday.

Organized and initiated by the NCCA, Dance Xchange was conceptualized as a Philippine celebration of the International Dance Day in accordance with Presidential Proclamation No. 154 declaring the last week of April as the “National Dance Week.”

It has been a venue and platform for dance discourse and exchange of ideas, an opportunity for networks, and broadening community access to the arts.

“It started in 2009 and from there on, we have been offering this venue for international groups to come and our local groups also to interact with them. It had been expanding in terms of participating international and foreign groups and ensuring the participation of groups from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao,” NCCA Deputy Executive Director Marichu Tellano explained.

For this year, NCCA partnered with the Iloilo Dinagyang Foundation Inc. (IDFI), local government units (LGUs) of Iloilo, and the University of San Agustin to bring the International Xchange to both the city and province of Iloilo.

Tellano said they received bids and offers from other LGUs to host the festival but she said that they considered the accessibility and willingness of the LGU in choosing the host province.

“We want to share this program to other places but we also looked at the accessibility of the place because there will be many teachers and groups who will participate. We also looked at the willingness of the LGU and we saw it here in Iloilo,” Tellano said.

This year’s International Dance Xchange in Iloilo will be the biggest as organizers conceptualized new activities.

“What is unique here in Iloilo is that we will be featuring programs and activities that were not included in the previous dance exchange. One example is the international dance conference which is not a component before,” Tellano added.

The International Dance Xchange themed “Connecting Cultures for Peace and Unity through Dance” will run from April 29 to May 2, 2020.

Fifteen dance groups from New Zealand, Nepal, Japan, Turkey, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, USA, Korea, China, Hong Kong and Macau, including 28 dance groups from the different parts of the Philippines, are expected to join the event.

The groups will represent all genres of dances such as traditional and indigenous dances, ballet, contemporary, modern jazz, and hip-hop.

“What we are offering to the Filipinos are all forms of dance because we wanted to push for all the forms to be acceptable because the young people are now into new forms and we want to engage young people,” Tellano furthered.

The festival will commence on April 29 with International Dance Workshop, International Dance Costumes Exhibit and Dance Xchange Opening Ceremony.