70 Carving Out a Space Corazon Generoso Inigo, Esteban (Basilio) S. Villaruz, and Jess de Paz. Inigo was among the first generation of students who trained under the modern dance choreographer Trudl Dubsky; she later took classes with Alice Reyes at the CCP. In Villaruz’s recollection, Dubsky even taught in UP during the pre-war years as she came to the Philippines in the 1930s. With Tony Fabella and Luis Layag, Villaruz followed the system of Alice Reyes when they taught at the CCP. And before Reyes and Locsin became the regular teachers of modern dance at the CCP, there were visiting choreographers and dancers who taught modern dance at the Anita Kane Studio—Norman Walker, Pauline Koner, and Betsy Escandor (Villaruz, e-mail to author, July 22). 4 The work highlights some of the “Igorot’s” daily routines, all rendered in classical ballet and the fusion of different dance forms. Ballet Philippines’ artistic director, Paul Alexander Morales recognizes the value of the work when he explains that “Igorot holds its ground as one of Ballet Philippines’ iconic pieces in its vast repertoire of classical, modern and contemporary work. It was first performed on October 11, 1987 at the Meervart Theater in Amsterdam of the Netherlands as a work commissioned by Les Petite Theatre Amsterdam, a dance company of five dancers. Back in high school at the Philippine Women’s College of Davao City, and college at the Ateneo de Davao University, Locsin would see the performances of the Igorot dance during folk dance competitions and realized that an Igorot piece would always win. She has since then been fascinated with the synchronicty of the dance movements and has thus used the formula she identifies as: “cygnets=unison dance=Igorot maidens” (Dakudao, “Agnes Locsin’s Igorot”). 5 She contemplated on creating an Igorot dance using the modern dance narrative and the fieldwork in Bontoc was part of her research before she created the work. “That was quite a trip and I still remember so many details of the journey... I remember the women and children coming to the mission house, curious at our presence. When they found out why we were there, they took us to a gathering hall, took out pans and pots and taught us their dances. In exchange, I taught them disco dancing. We jammed. Afterwards, the women sang songs and played the nose flute for us,” Locsin remembers (Dakudao, “Agnes Locsin’s Igorot”). 6 The success of Igorot made Locsin realize how the Bayanihan was a strong presence in her career and works. Although she both recognized and appreciated such influence, she wanted to create another piece—the Bagobo which was so “minimalist in movements compared to Igorot.” The former did not see as many performances as the latter but this did not discourage Locsin from considering it a piece “contrapuntal” to her famous Igorot. In fact, Bagobo was a “perfect choice” because the piece was closer to the reality of the people of Davao, the Bagobo, being one of their tribes. With her new work, Locsin’s choreographies traversed the Northern and Southern Philippines (Locsin, e-mail to author, July 22, 2011). 7 Locsin is known as a modern dance choreographer and she even distinguishes her style from those of Beltran and the other contemporary dancers. But because I use the definition of “contemporary dance” in Joseph Gonzales’s book