From war dance to theater of war moro moro performances in the philippines 8

Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press... Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press.. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1972.. Quezon City: Ateneo de Ma

Conclusion

Heritage is our legacy from the past, what we live with today, and what we pass on to future generations.1 There is a constant negotiation, however, for what aspects of culture should be considered as heritage In Chapter 1, we saw how the

moro-moro was seen as baggage by a segment of the Filipino population, and this led

to the death of the moro-moro in some parts of the country It continues to be a living tradition today, however, because some communities deemed the moro-moro as

heritage and saw in it a legacy worth passing on from generation to generation As the

church and the elite abandoned the moro-moro, it was appropriated by peasants, and

had become folklorized Today, there are moves among some scholars in the academe

to use the moro-moro as a basis for the creation of a national theater because of its

long history, wide geographic reach, and its being a theater of the people

The debate on whether the moro-moro is baggage or heritage is on-going and

remains unresolved There are anxieties over the appropriateness of cultivating a theater premised on war between Christians and Muslims as the basis for the formation of a national theater in a country where the Christian majority is engaged in

a protracted conflict with the Muslim minority Another source of discomfort is the

perceived complicity of the moro-moro in the Spanish colonial project This theater is

conventionally seen as a tool used by the Spanish establishment to promote the superiority of their race and religion

In Chapter 2, this study addressed these anxieties by shifting the angle of

vision from the ship to the shore, by embracing the term moro-moro instead of

1

UNESCO 2009."World Heritage Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage." 1972 Online: <http://whc.unesco.org/en/about/>.

komedya Tracing the roots of the Filipinized komedya to the Spanish comedia may

suggest a derivative theater that is a variant, or from the perspective of Spanish observers a poor copy, if not bastardization, of the Spanish original By recovering the

earlier meaning of the word moro-moro, that of a war dance, which in reality was a

blanket term that covered a variety of native war dances, we have emphasized the

genre's rootedness in native traditions The centrality of the war dance in the moro-moro is what gives this form of theater a distinctiveness in orchestration, making it

unmistakably indigenous in the way it merges poetry with music and dance

In the next three chapters we examined the Filipino-ness of the moro-moro by

showing how the modes of composition, delivery, and consumption of the plays betray native sensibilities We see, for instance, in the penchant for repetition and monotonous delivery of verses the persistence of habits of oral composition, and residues of an epic chanting tradition In the art of dictation, we see the intricate interaction among actors and musicians, and between dance and dialogue, all held

together by the expert reading of verses by the diktador We see affinities between the moro-moro and other theater traditions in the diktador-prompter-playwright's mode

of composition, for like his counterparts elsewhere in the region, his script-building is

an act of bricolage, that is, he makes use of available stock imagery and scenarios and

combines them differently for each performance In creating a play, he follows a choreographic logic, and his choices of characters and scenes are guided by a desire to best showcase movement even at the expense of the development of the plot An understanding of choreographic logic allows us to appreciate the "playwright as

choreographer" and to be able to put his writing, and the idiosyncracies of moro-moro

scripts, in perspective

The emphasis on dance in moro-moro performances is founded on native

notions of power and the belief in the efficaciousness and suitability of dance as

offering The moro-moro performed in villages is in the context of a panata, and

dancing is performed in fulfillment of a sacred vow In this sense we can see patterns

of continuity between pre-Hispanic religious ritual where dancing was also central.2

We can therefore appreciate the moro-moro as a site of convergence between Spanish Catholic and indio conceptions of dance as devotion, and this created the opportunity for dances, as well as martial arts (as arnis fighters remind us), to be sustained for

centuries

In Chapters 6 and 7, we saw changes in the form and content of the moro-moro as it made its way from village stage to theater house and from the past to the post 9-11 age We see the moro-moro as part of a conscious culture-building project

to assert Filipino identity within the theatrical context The move to make the moro-moro a basis for national theater, however, raises important issues and concerns In chapter 6 we saw the emergence of issues of authenticity As the moro-moro is

reformed, updated, and modernized, the challenge is to do so in a way that allows it to

still be a moro-moro and not become "just a play, like any other play"—to use the

phrase thrown around by old-timers in San Dionisio

In Chapter 7, we tackled the issue of the moro-moro being associated with the

Catholic majority and how turning it into national theater may marginalize the non-Catholics We drew attention to some encouraging trends in the portrayal of the Moro, showing how through strategies of deletion, inversion, substitution, and appropriation, the Moro has acquired new meanings and is no longer confined to the role of villain

2 See Ma Teresa Muñoz "Notes on Theater: Pre-Hispanic Philippines (Religion, Myth, religious Ritual) in

Antonio Manuud ed 1967 Brown Heritage: Essays on Philippine Cultural Tradition and Literature Quezon City:

Ateneo de Manila University Press pp 648-667

and vanquished We drew attention to the Moro's "aesthetic victory" which made Moro roles more coveted and prestigious

We also put into question the basic assumption that in this genre the Christians are always heroes/victors and the Muslims are always the villain/vanquished, by

arguing how the moro-moro's symmetrical design created equivalences in Christian

and Moro kingdoms, allowing for both factions to have their equitable share of

virtuous and vicious characters The Christian-Muslim divide in the moro-moro can

better be viewed as a "choreographic opposition" in form and not in substance, rather than a "binary opposition" which results in "othering" There is an underlying suggestion of sameness, of mirroring Even the word we use to refer to this genre

bears this symmetrical design: Moro-Moro

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