Since Rose Borromeo came back to Manila after over three decades in Singapore, she has wasted no time in reestablishing herself in dance circles by reopening her dance school.
Aside from teaching ballet, jazz and tap dancing, Borromeo’s Dance Arts Studio along Lee Street in Pasig was among the first to introduce classical Spanish dance and flamenco.
Partnered by the elegant bailaor, Ruben Nieto, Borromeo performed and conducted classes until her departure for Singapore, where she continued in Spanish dance teaching, nurturing the dance talents of Singaporeans as well as members of the ex-pat community.
She used the structured syllabi of the Instituto de la Danza Espanola developed by Deanna Blacher in Perth, Australia, patterned after the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) syllabus, which tackles all the different Spanish dance styles: Escuela Bolera, Clasico, Regional Dances and Flamenco.
All told, there is a preparatory level, followed by five levels a student needs to attain before one continues on to six professional levels for teaching and performance, for which a student is certified as Professor de Baile or Maestro de Baile. The first Filipino to achieve the title Professor de Baile Mayor is Angel Gomez, a protégée of Sr. Guillermo Gomez, and later, of Borromeo.
Last December, Deanna Blacher, upon the invitation of Borromeo, came to the Philippines to assess the first batch of students to finish the preparatory level in the reopened school. Blacher found the Filipina students “amazing,” with a natural sense for dance.
Says Borromeo, “Spanish blood and influence cannot be denied in the Filipino race. It is the social limitations (diyahe) and “mahinhin-ness” (timidity) that limit their ability to expose their ‘duende,’” she says, referring to the word usually used to refer in Latin art circles to the “soul.”
Borromeo believes that although Filipinos may not dance as free as the gypsies in Spain who developed the art of flamenco, they can deliver a reasonable facsimile of it once they have acquired maturity and enough life experience.
“We cannot deny that it is a copy because we are not and never will be gypsies. What we have imbibed is the Escuela Bolera style which is very evident in our Maria Clara dances,” she adds.
Complex
Though some flamenco purists may disagree with putting a structure to Spanish dance, flamenco in particular, whose roots derive from free style, almost spontaneous movements, Blacher is quick to explain that precisely because of this, there is a need to develop a base on which one who wishes to learn the dance form can start establishing oneself.
Indeed, the art of flamenco can be as complex as the rhythms it carries. “In the flamenco stream, each level introduces the student to a new palo (beat or rhythm) with marcajes( marking of steps), escobillas and palmas (clapping) and Spanish terminology,” explains Borromeo.
The challenges progress to higher levels as students learn the intricacies of each rhythm that the level introduces.
For their dedication to pushing further the cause of the Spanish Dance form, both Borromeo and Blacher have been given honors by Spain—for Blacher, the Cross of the Order of Civil Merit, and for Borromeo, the Order of Isabella Catolica.
About the Spanish dance becoming a professional preoccupation in the Philippines, Borromeo says,” One can become a professional when one has the command of whatever form they master and have the desire and drive to share it with the world.”
Citing Angel Gomez and Emma Estrada of Fundacion Centro Flamenco in Manila as examples, Borromeo says there’s clearly a new surge of interest in yet another dance form to which the Filipino, and his innate sense of dance, can naturally and perhaps easily take on, and in a disciplined, structured manner.