Flow State: ‘Poetry in Motion’ at Thrive Art Gallery

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By John Anthony S. Estolloso

It was a curious event to start the New Year: the usual viewing space at Thrive Art Gallery was cleared of its exhibition panels, the paintings and installations removed to the corners of the room. The cleared space provided a modest arena of sorts flanked by plastic chairs for the motley audience that trickled in. With these simple rearrangements, the performance area was set for a miscellany of dance, song, and poetry, and by extension, a rare gathering of local artists and literati – at least, for that afternoon of January 3.

Literally ‘Poetry in Motion’, the straightforward title exuded a much profounder and more nuanced delivery of artforms. On the figurative spotlight that afternoon were Anito and Malaya Gavino, the mother-daughter duo whose performances were reflective of a ‘personal journey as a migrant with cultural memories of home, desiring to remember, reminisce, and re-imagine.’ In their interpretations, artforms become mediums of shared experiences and embodied experiments which aim to educate, inform, inspire, and unite communities, as written by Ani Gavino in the caption for the event’s digital poster.

Based in the United States but rooted deep in Filipino culture, mother and daughter bridged a wide span of themes – and it showed in the programme. Malaya’s poetry and singing were as evocative as her name; Anito’s stories drew out both honest humor and biting satire. Their dance pieces mirrored familiar aspects of culture, and interwoven with song and poetry, become narratives themselves: the fluidity of motion, the sinuous combinations of gesture and textile, the graceful flow of arms, hands, and cloth, the rhythms of sundry genres, all coming together as a delicate reminder that dance as artform is the human body – its physicality, structure, vigor, and poise – in the role of storyteller and thus, memory-keeper.

Between the songs, stories, and spiels, there were poems. Palanca-winning poet Marcel Milliam delivered verses and personal translations. Local author Jag Muyco recited lines written from moments of contemplation. Poetry enthusiasts and young artistes spoke about art and experiences, and the imperative necessity of expressing both; truly yours perorated about how to spend a materialistic New Year, in a double octave.

So what were the dances and poetry all about?

There was the making of art and the writing of poetry as an act of resistance. Commentaries about the drudgery of the times. The connections that bind past and present. The examination of one’s identity among many identities. The search for personal meanings. The questioning of one’s place in the state of things. The Filipino riding and breaking through the waves of the diaspora. The Filipina making her mark amid a myriad of cultures. The Pinoy celebrating and satirizing culture: language, clothing, food, manners, the bronzed oriental skin – and inevitably, the pent-up frustrations of being Filipino.

That afternoon, Thrive Art Gallery became a negotiated yet also contested space of forms and ideas: there was the affirmation of aesthetic ideals yet also a defiance of a restrained status quo.

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I end this article by introducing our readers to a term used by art historians and critics to describe a composite of art: Gesamtkunstwerk. (On hindsight, I might have used this word before in passing.) German in origin, it was coined by composer Richard Wagner to refer to ‘a total work of art’, a complete production which incorporates visual art, music, poetry and narrative, drama, and other recognized aesthetic forms. While he was mainly referring to opera (and future critics would recognize film as one of its expressions), we can modestly describe last Saturday’s performance as this totality of art. In Anito and Malaya’s hodgepodge of poems, dances, and songs, there was a spontaneity of sentiment and emotion even as the whole becomes a cathartic yet loosely structured outpouring of perceptions and reflections, tied coherently by shared themes of culture, identity, and self-knowledge.

‘Poetry in Motion’ offered a paradoxical proposition that while song, dance, and verse flow through in windy whimsy or wave-like fluidity, they are likewise countercurrents: manifestations of resistance to an especially intolerant and illiberal spirit of the times. We hope to ride with and against this current with their future performances: we look forward to these.

[The writer is a language and literature teacher in one of the private schools of the city. Photos are from Audrey Therese Aray and SH; the poster is from the gallery.]