Stella Abrera, ABT’s First Fil-Am Principal Ballerina

Originally Posted on asiaamericana.com

Stella Abrera was promoted to principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater. She becomes the company’s first Filipino American principal ballerina. Abrera of South Pasadena, California, began her studies with Philip and Charles Fuller and Cynthia Young at Le Studio in Pasadena and with Lorna Diamond and Patricia Hoffman at the West Coast Ballet Theatre in San Diego. She also studied the Royal Academy of Dancing method at the Halliday Dance Centre in Sydney, Australia.  Abrera joined American Ballet Theatre as a member of the corps de ballet in 1996 and was appointed a Soloist in 2001.

Her repertoire with ABT includes Calliope in Apollo, Gamzatti in La Bayadère, the Ballerina in The Bright Stream, the Fairy Godmother in Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella, Gulnare in Le Corsaire, Mercedes and the Driad Queen in Don Quixote, Helena in The Dream, Giselle, Myrta and the peasant pas de deux in Giselle, Manon in Lady of the Camellias, Lescaut’s Mistress in Manon, His Friend’s Wife in The Moor’s Pavane, Clara, the Princess in Alexei Ratmansky’s The Nutcracker, Emilia in Othello, the Older Sister in Pillar of Fire, Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, the Lilac Fairy and Princess Florine in The Sleeping Beauty, the pas de trois in Swan Lake, leading roles in Airs, Bach Partita, Baker’s Dozen, Ballet Imperial, Birthday Offering, The Brahms-Haydn Variations, C. to C. (Close to Chuck), Fancy Free, In the Upper Room, The Leaves Are Fading, Petite Mort, Sinfonietta, Les Sylphides, Symphonic Variations, Symphonie Concertante, Symphony #9, Symphony in C, Thirteen Diversions, Within You Without You: A Tribute to George Harrison, Without Words. Abrera created the Spanish Dance in Ratmansky’s The Nutcracker, the Fairy Violente (Temperament) in Ratmansky’s The Sleeping Beauty and leading roles in Pretty Good Year and Seven Sonatas.  Abrera received the Gold Medal at the Royal Academy of Dancing’s Adeline Genée Awards in London in 1995.  She has performed as a guest artist across the United States and Europe, as well as with The Australian Ballet, The Royal New Zealand Ballet and Ballet Philippines.

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The Pilipino American Literary Festival

~The Pilipino American Literary Festival: A UniPro Kwentuhan Event~Co-Sponsored by the Fordham Creative Writing Dept.

Featuring: Gina Apostol Sarah Gambito Bino Realuyo

Saturday, July 11, 2015 Fordham Law School - Bateman Room 150 W 62nd St, New York, NY 10023 Admission: FREE

We are the Invisible Minority, the product of colonization, corruption, and the resulting Philippine diaspora, struggling for freedom and success in America. And yet, creative voices persist, sharing the stories of our unique history, identity, and culture, and immortalizing the Pilipino American experience.

Celebrate the prominent storytellers of our community – Gina Apostol, Sarah Gambito, and Bino Realuyo – at the Pilipino American Literary Festival. Listen to excerpts from their work, engage in a dialogue about their personal journeys, and, above all, write your own story.

Visit the following link for more information:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1441495546157087/

Kwentuhan Continues: Livin' La Vida Imelda

What is it about Imelda Marcos that has captured the minds of artists lately? Last year, we couldn’t avoid the posters for Here Lies Love, plastered all over New York City; Imelda’s face was thrown back, microphone in hand, the neon sleeves of her Maria Clara gown punctuating the ad for the show at the Public Theater. Word-of-mouth described it as more of a nightclub than a show. It was immersive, a trendy theatrical buzzword, and had music by Fatboy Slim and David Byrne. There were rave reviews, packed houses, and a demand to bring the show back after its initial limited run concluded. For a while, this slice of Filipino history was the hottest ticket in town. But with Imelda Marcos as the twinkling stage diva-du-jour, did Here Lies Love deliver a more glamorized version of her rise to political power than Filipinos recall? This month, we see a new take on the controversial first lady. Livin’ La Vida Imelda, directed by Ralph B. Peña, premiered as part of Ma-Yi Theatre’s current season with creator and star Carlos Celdran at its helm. Mr. Celdran shows a less glorified version of Imelda Marcos than the lovesick heroine of Here Lies Love. Rather than dramatizing her life for the stage, Celdran aims, instead, for complexity.

In fact, the show is based far more in activism, heritage and history, than it is in traditional theatrics. Livin’ La Vida Imelda didn’t start the way most plays start, with workshops or table readings and maybe a small production beneath a proscenium. Instead, it began on the streets of Manila.

Celdran had been leading walking tours of Manila with Walk This Way, a company he founded. A number of routes were offered, which all introduced tourists to major sites around the city. But Celdran’s skills as a performer became the real attraction. Eventually his unique blend of tour guiding, meets musical theater, meets clowning, turned each tour into its own show. His tours became more solidified and scripted. He developed a rhythm and audiences grew.

Livin’ La Vida Imelda began as one of these tours. Celdran led groups past major Marcosian sites in a presentation he referred to as, “ironically irreverent yet informative.” Instead of the disco-dancing woman known outside the Philippines mostly for her shoe collection, Carlos Celdran winded from site to site, stood on the ground Imelda had walked upon and broke down the Marcos mythos. In 2012, The New York Times called the piece, “a delicious mix of history, gossip and social commentary.”

Soon, Ma-Yi Theater’s Executive Director Jorge Ortell took notice of Celdran and had the vision to bring the tour to New York stages.

“I watched the Manila version over two years ago and right away thought this would be very appropriate for NYC,” said Jorge Ortoll, Executive Director of Ma-Yi Theater Company. “I spoke with Carlos, who was willing to make cuts and revise the script to make it more resonant to non-Filipino ears, as our audience is not only Filipino-American, but also non-Filipino Asians and non-Asians.”

How exactly did a walking tour turn into a stage show? Ma-Yi’s expertise paired with Celdran’s vision and storytelling certainly bode well for the future of Livin’ La Vida Imelda and we have high hopes for the production.

As Ortoll explained, “Artistic Director Ralph Peña directs the Ma-Yi version and he and Carlos culled it from a 2.5 hour script to 90 minutes. It's tighter, more cohesive and moves at a very rapid pace. We've also added an actual set, projections and multiple lighting and sound cues, to make it a true theatrical piece.”

That said, the team also has the burden of sharing a darker time in Filipino history with New Yorkers-- folks who likely only know Imelda Marcos from bubblegum subway ads or a thumping Fatboy Slim beat. That responsibility isn’t lost on Celdran or the team at Ma-Yi.

“One has to be at least 40-years-old to remember what the Marcos regime was like,” says Ortoll. “It set the tone for unbridled plunder and disrespect of human rights and freedom of speech. The regimes following Marcos all took his example as license to do the same and even more. How and why this happened is an important history lesson to anyone of any age and any nationality.”

If there is one way to tactfully open eyes, it’s with art. It’s no wonder that Celdran, like so many artists before him, have latched onto performance as his form of activism. By mixing humor, music, drama and storytelling, an audience can be taken on a journey through the Marcos’ highs and lows. And, when done well, everyone lands in the same place when the curtain falls, thinking the same thing, experiencing the same feelings and perhaps ready to take the same steps toward positive change.

So, what does Ma-Yi want audiences to take away?

“A sense of discovery,” Ortoll says. “The script brings forth the noble intents of Imelda, but her narcissism and psychoses did not allow for her good intentions to be realized well. She is a complex woman. Only people who lived through the Marcos era remember how harrowing those years were - and history lessons should not be distorted with lies and truth evasion.”

Though the journey of the show was unique, perhaps it’s fitting that Livin’ La Vida Imelda’s origins were in a literal pilgrimage around Manila. Tourists and residents of the city could march together, and come to conclusions about the controversial Imelda Marcos together. Now, fresh audiences in a new country will take their own steps with the story, Celdran still ready and revving as he encourages you to “walk this way!”

Livin' La Vida Imelda closes this weekend. For tickets, head to Telecharge.com.

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This post is Part 2 in our Kwentuhan blog series. Kwentuhan is a UniPro initiative that promotes storytelling in the Filipino American community. Read Part 1 here.

Leave Taylor Swift Alone

Disclaimer: If you like Taylor Swift, well - come sit down next to me. If you don't like Taylor Swift, well - sit down anyway. Because this one's for you.

Earlier this month, NYC & Company announced that Taylor Swift would be the New York City Global Welcome Ambassador for 2014-2015. People are pissed, and I'm not so sure why.

I'm not exactly certain what the job description or criteria for a "global welcome ambassador" is (nor certain if there was ever one before TSwift), but apparently there are a lot of folks who don't think that Taylor Swift fits the bill for a number of reasons - the most obvious one being that she is not originally from New York. But then again, how many people these days are pure born and bred New Yorkers?

Having lived in New York City for the last four years, I've found it a rarity to meet people who are originally from here. When meeting new people, one question that is almost guaranteed to come up in conversation is "Where are you from?" (insert my constant internal dilemma of how to answer this question -- you mean, where my parents are from? where I grew up? where I live now? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!) New York City is filled with so many people who aren't necessarily from here, but who are making it here.

Not all of us have moved into a $20M Tribeca apartment like Taylor Swift, but who cares -- my five-story walk-up tells the same story. It's a story of someone who has always been fascinated by the lights and sounds of New York City and always believed (even before stepping foot in this country) that it's a place where dreams come true (blame it on movies and TV shows). It's the same story as all the others who moved from home to chase a dollar and a dream: the actress, the dancer, the hustler, the chef, the artist, the entrepreneur, the singer, the lost, the bored. They're all here and they're all a part of what makes New York City exactly what it is - a melting pot of diversity and dreams.

In saying someone isn't fit to represent New York City, it sends a message that New York City is unwelcoming, selective, limiting. I love this place for the way it has enabled and embraced me; I love it even more when I see it doing the same for others around me who aren't originally from here. Taylor Swift's big song as part of this whole campaign is called "Welcome to New York." The song even says, "It's been waiting for you." But between you and me, I think the lyric should be changed to "You've been waiting for it."

Taylor Swift has been waiting for it, and now that she's here -- she's taking ownership of it. She's putting her budding romance with New York City on display, publicizing their incompatibility while celebrating their differences and thus adding to the cultural fabric of this city. Who are we to fault her for that?

It's interesting to juxtapose this with the situation of many Pilipino first-settlers who come to the US, who (when finally here) celebrate their arrivals quietly - never wanting to attract attention to themselves, keeping their cultural practices and traditions behind closed doors, and sticking to their own little Pilipino communities - a true detriment, in my opinion. How else would the Pilipino identity and presence be seen and heard here if we all failed to assert ourselves in a land that's not ours among people who aren't like us? Okay -- that kinda got deep, but moral of the story is: Taylor Swift's not a New Yorker, but she's adding to the Big Apple's flavor, and it's time we took a bite and moved on.

New York City is just as much Taylor Swift's as anyone else's to claim. And if you don't agree, then please tell me why the Statue of Liberty gets to be the symbol of American independence and freedom when she wasn't even made in America?

Photo credit: taylorswift.com

Kwentuhan, Part 1: Undressing the Fragments

“Storytelling is the most important part of any culture. It is the way we pass on our values, our dreams, our memories, our ancestry, our history, our herstory. It is a tool to keep our culture alive,” writes Renee Rises. She continues, “Every day a person tells a story. In every culture, in every country, we live our lives and we share stories daily. About our day, about our best friend, about our youth, about teaching, about creating art, about the closeness of our family, our struggles, our foods, our literature.... Stories live everywhere.”

It is precisely because of this - the undeniable power of storytelling - that UniPro launched the Kwentuhan initiative. Celebrating Filipino American History Month and the unique stories of our community, Kwentuhan promotes four different theatrical productions, all the original work of Filipinos in NYC, all showing through October and November 2014. The first of these shows is Renee’s Undressing the Fragments.

On Friday, October 24 at the WOW Cafe Theater in NYC, I attended the premiere of Undressing the Fragments, a non-linear theatrical production that delves into the lives of 14 characters in one act and 16 scenes. Although they are all Filipino American, Renee captures the diversity within our community by portraying the characters as very unique individuals; they experience different hardships and joys, they relate to their ancestral heritage in their own ways (if at all), and they have varying (and sometimes conflicting) values. On top of the struggles of trying to build lives of happiness and success, as members of the Invisible Minority navigating between (at least) two worlds, the characters must face the reality and helplessness of being oceans away from their motherland as it is ravaged by Super Typhoon Haiyan. Renee explains:

"Undressing the Fragments is a play that explores the diversity of the Filipina/o American community during the time of a natural disaster, during Typhoon Haiyan. It brings about various issues that impacted the community before, during and after the storm. While the play takes place during the most catastrophic typhoon to ever hit the Philippines, it explores issues that Filipina/os in America face as families, friends, educators, activists, soldiers, mothers, wives, brothers, sisters and humans. There isn't one issue it focuses on, it's many; hence-- fragments. There are so many pieces to our identity and I wanted to capture as many voices and lives as I possibly could in a small amount of time. I wrote the play while travelling in California from San Francisco, to LA, to San Diego, to Chicago and back to New York. I listened to many Filipina/os across the country and I listened deeply. I wrote with all of their stories in mind."

The play succeeds not only in engaging the audience in the characters' complex emotions, but also in challenging us with thoughtful, uncomfortable, and at times unanswerable questions. "What does it mean to be a Filipina/o in America?" states the show description. In this play, it means everything from college PCNs to playing with light-skinned dolls that contrast so starkly with your own skin color, and from superstitions to the ugliness of shame in your queer family member. This latter scene, when a young Pinoy reveals his sexual orientation to his much-respected Kuya, was an "Oh, shit" moment for me; suddenly my Filipino American-ness smacked me in the face and I found that I was fighting to keep myself together. Although it is not a scenario that I have experienced personally, the scene expressed so much about the respect, pride, and social acceptance that Filipino American families value so dearly, and which may also become a weight so heavy that it forces the family - the foundation of Filipino culture - to fall apart.

Just as meaningful as the play was the post-show talkback, when Renee and the actors conversed with the audience about what we had just seen. What surprised us? What affected us? We spoke about the significance of the spotlight highlighting the teen-aged Jessica, the youngest character in the play, who will share with other Filipino American youth the honor/burden of carrying forth and building upon our community's traditions, successes, and shortcomings. We spoke, of course, about Typhoon Haiyan, raising the same question we've all heard over and over again since last November: What can we do to help? Well, what CAN we do? We're here in the States, miles away from the land that many of us, perhaps, know very little about. Are we obligated to join relief and rebuilding efforts on the ground? Should we organize our own fundraising events? Where should we send the funds?

Of the many questions asked and thoughts shared during this discussion, Renee's poignant reflection on Haiyan resonated with me the most. She explained how the destruction of Hurricane Katrina had blown her away upon seeing it firsthand as a volunteer. To think that Haiyan's level of devastation was much worse, and that this time, she looked like the victims.... This inexplicable connection that she feels to Filipinos – kapwa – made an enormous sense of guilt and helplessness well within her for being in NY rather than in the Philippines. But as Undressing the Fragments actress Jana Lynne Umipig responded, yes, we ARE here. We must be fully present where we are, remembering the reasons why our families migrated here, and innovating ways to maximize our impact as a united community. True to life, Undressing the Fragments leaves the focus of that impact as yet to be determined.

As for the overall message Renee wants the audience to take away? “I want the audience to make decisions for themselves. The message? Filipinos are... unique. We're beautiful. We're diverse. We're complex. We struggle. We're brown. We're yellow. We're friends. We're enemies. We're artists. We're talented. We exist. We have dreams. We have hopes. Aspirations. We work together. We are solidarity. We struggle. We listen. We learn. We love. We are human.”

To read more from Renee Rises, check out her three-part story in The FilAm Magazine:

• Part 1: The first wave of Asian American actors were Filipinos
• Part 2: Here Lies Love’ provides full-time jobs to FilAm actors
• Part 3: Coming soon!

For more Kwentuhan, support our community’s artists and attend the rest of the shows, and return to our blog for exclusive interviews with the creators:

• Luis Francia’s The Beauty of Ghosts (directed by Claro de los Reyes)
• Carlos Celdran’s Livin’ La Vida Imelda (directed by Ralph B. Peña)
• Nicole Maxali’s Forgetting the Details

Lastly, to get involved in NYC community efforts to commemorate Typhoon Haiyan and discuss climate justice, attend the "Remembering Haiyan" community forum + vigil on Saturday, November 8, 2014.

Special thanks to Kirklyn Escondo for interviewing Renee!