IT’S NOT about the song, it’s not about the dance, it’s not about any of those forms in which a story is told. It’s about the story itself—it’s about the truth.
Indeed, it’s about the very truth that haunts the nation these days, a haunting provoked by two occasions: one is the commemoration of the million-people street vigil that ousted the dictator Ferdinand Marcos a full generation ago; the other is the electoral season, which has inspired the twisting of the truth in every perverse way, a tidying up undertaken to get Marcos’ perfectly worthy junior, Bongbong, elected as vice president, thus putting him one breath away from the very throne in which his father sat for 14 years and presided over a reign of murder and plunder.
The truth is simply too simple, if not obvious, to admit any disputation: Marcos hijacks our democracy, puts his archrival Ninoy Aquino in prison, frees him when he falls critically ill and, to escape the prospect of him dying in his hands and for humanitarian show, passes him off to the United States for treatment; despite warnings from Marcos’ wife herself that assassins lie in wait for him, he returns and, sure enough, is assassinated.
But, with “Rebel,” Ballet Manila manages still to twist the truth in a unique, not necessarily credible or artistic, way: Marcos forces Ninoy and Juan de la Cruz, the character representing the Filipino people, into a gladiatorial duel; Ninoy stabs Juan dead, is sent into exile, lured by Inang Bayan (Motherland) to return and set up for his own murder at the avenging hands of Juan, who reappears as a dancing, shooting dead; Marcos and Imelda, meanwhile, sneak away into the shadows, excused.
Sickened
I sat there feeling sickened as I watched myself, as a legitimate piece of the flesh and blood of Juan de la Cruz, being slain by Ninoy at Marcos’ behest and slaying Ninoy back at the behest even more ridiculously of my own Motherland. And to think that I had gone to the premiere of “Rebel” prepared to feel pleased—as in fact I had always felt each previous time I had gone for a Ballet Manila performance—and this time also to feel rewarded—after all, the night marked the fourth and final day of the Edsa People Power revolt, the day of victory.
Apparently, some murmurings of conscience have attended the plotting of “Rebel.” Or else the British choreographer, Martin Lawrence, would not be ready with a rationalization. Mr. Lawrence, whom everyone points to as the chief plotter (and who presumably would not be caught doing to Cromwell what he has done to Ninoy), says on the program:
“‘Rebel’ incorporates all the dramatic narrative and passion of Spartacus and puts it alongside the 1986 People Power Revolution. It focuses on the struggle that caused a division between ‘the powers that be’ and the ‘people’—corruption and greed versus unity and equality.
“I have chosen not to create a ballet that is a dance/history lesson, but rather make parallels between the two events and the main characters…”
If Mr. Lawrence sees parallels between Spartacus and the Edsa rising, these can only be the farthest-fetched ones—the events are separated by two oceans and by more than two millennia. Not to mention, Edsa is no “Swan Lake” or “Romeo and Juliet” or, for that matter, “Spartacus.” Edsa is no legend; it is contemporary history. In fact, it is the ghost that has come a-haunting because its life story has become so perverted in the retelling it has all but lost the defining moral lessons it holds.
For the perpetration of this perversion, thanks to the likes not only of Mr. Lawrence but also of his acquiescent local partners, who come out for him out of perhaps ignorance or confusion or some bias. They say they have tested the production on campus audiences and are happy to report a good review.
If they go to Bongbong, they will get an even better one.