LIKHA-Pilipino Folk Ensemble Presents Binanog-Banog at the 35th Annual San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival.

This world premiere, Binanog-Banog, is based on three folk dances from the Tumandok/Suludnon tribe of the Philippines. The story opens with a peaceful village scene and ritual sacrifice. Then a banog arrives, a powerful and sacred eagle, and in the first dance—Binanugan—dancers imitate its flight. The next dance, Inagong Sayaw-Sayaw, is a celebration, until the eagle unexpectedly becomes a threat to the village. The third dance, Dinagmay, uses movements from a traditional courtship dance to portray a fierce battle. Warriors implement combat movements, defending the terrorized ardilya squirrel, and the piece ends in the heroic killing of the fearsome bird.

Choreographer Rudi Soriano created this presentation to share these rarely-seen forms of Philippine dance and translate them for a wider audience. The Tumandok/Suludnon, also known as Panayanon Sulud, are an indigenous Visayan group of people living in the Capiz-Lambunao mountainous area of Panay, Visayan Islands, Philippines. The group is small and is called a lost tribe: they kept their traditional culture hidden and unaffected by Spanish colonization. The group is known for its binanog dance, a dance showing a close relationship with the animal world. The banog is the Philippine Eagle, the rare and powerful Philippine National Bird. Now endangered due to deforestation, it is one of the largest eagles in the world, up to 3-1/2 feet long and weighing up to 18 pounds. A different banog dance is also known in Mindanao.

Artistic Director Rudi Soriano learned Binanog-Banog from Mitchu Mordeno on a research trip to the Philippines in 2005. He choreographed this performance in 2013, adding contemporary Philippine folk movements and theatrical elements for the stage. Traditional movements include the small, repetitive side-steps with hands to the side, and the swooping and flying movements that imitate the flight of the bird. In the Philippines, the eagle dancer wears a simple costume of silky cloth with long draping sleeves: today’s costume was made in the Philippines of rooster feathers. The music is also traditional to the Tumandok/Suludnon tribe, with instrumentalists setting the dynamics and the beat, improvising on four gongs and two goat skin drums, sticks, and wood.