Arnel Francis

My first day with Ms. Myra Beltran proved to be a real opener to the world of Contemporary dance. More than I have expected it to be, dance composition has taken a higher plane than just the dynamics one needs to learn. The technique class was an agonizing starter that made me love the floor and realize that the dancer needs to embrace his basic space- the floor or the ground. Finding one’s center and making it the source of all movements make everything easy. Yes, this was easier said than done. I have learned this in our Modern Dance class but there’s a time to rekindle and relish every bit of the feeling again. Laban cube taught me the basic of going from one point to another and finishing it into a LINE without compromising the process. Every choreographer, I believe, should go back to these essentials. True to what Ms. Beltran has said, a lot of movement and meaning can be drawn if a choreographer views the space from the outside. As complex as it is, breakin...

My years of studying Linguistics offered me the windows of fathoming dance. Like verbal language, I came to understand more its structure- the morpheme it offers and the semantics it conveys. The Chomskyan in me is just starting and I suppose I may “structuralize” it. When I first came to learn the formal “words” of dance, I was mesmerized by the selective high-sounding ones. Later did I know that the meaning of Modern Dance could oppose yet equal the beauty of Classical Ballet. Like a child babbling its first words, I mustered a few and began lavishing it, augmenting my lexicon. But it was still a raw battle for LEARNING. I felt I only knew its derivational properties and not the inflectional side of it. Come to think of it, a second language sprouted just when the first language was still substandard. When my vocabulary grew to a handful ones, I realize the functions of each and how it could be used in a sentence called dance phrase. Now the theories I cling to...

“ Nocturne ” which means that of “a night scene” is a light, contemporary dance done on a pop song. It depicts the travails of a person deeply in-love and feeling the gruels of loneliness and yearning.

“ Nocturne ” which means that of “a night scene” is a light, contemporary dance done on a pop song. It depicts the travails of a person deeply in-love and feeling the gruels of loneliness and yearning.