There are a few Tagalog words with no direct English translation, many of which are popular topics for dinner table conversation. These include kilig, diskarte, tampo, umay, or sayang. But there’s one word that’s particularly difficult to put a finger on—gigil, a stirring personal sensation that Fifth Wall takes as a starting point for its seventh festival edition.
The festival dissects “Gigil,” also its title, into three parts: pigil, or restraint; building up into ipon; culminating in sabog, or release.
This thematic evolution is set to be transmuted through a series of performance art pieces, multimedia installations, film, talks, and creative parties running from Oct. 22 to 25 at the NBS Park in Pasig. Throughout, Fifth Wall looks at the world around us, which often demands composure, and ultimately asks, “What happens when we can no longer contain what we feel?”
“Gigil” through different genres
You might remember the early days of Fifth Wall as a virtual platform in 2020. Since then, the independent platform has held space for the ways dance can be presented and pushed beyond conventional theater, usually in conversation with other disciplines.
While Fifth Wall practices year-round work and pop-up activations, for its annual flagship festival “Gigil,” the featured artists work across performance, film, contemporary art, and more—including Al Garcia, Bunny Cadag, Ea Torrado, James Clar, Tarzeer Pictures, Timothy Axibal, and Tohru Dance.
On Oct. 22, Filipino American light and media artist Clar makes his first foray into live performance with “Manila After Dark.” The co-production between Fifth Wall and Search Mindscape is inspired by Ishmael Bernal’s “Manila by Night” and choreographed by Fifth Wall’s founder Madge Reyes. It combines cinema, light, and performance in a manner that promises to explore the relationship between the city and its inhabitants when night falls—a relationship that hasn’t changed much since Bernal’s film release in 1980.
“‘Manila by Night’ and ‘Manila After Dark’ are about characters that use the night as a way to release themselves from the restrictions of the day,” Clar says. “This is a human need and hasn’t changed in the time [of] the movie till now. This makes folding our contemporary times into the film time possible.”
“‘Manila by Night’ and ‘Manila After Dark’ are about characters that use the night as a way to release themselves from the restrictions of the day. This is a human need and hasn’t changed in the time [of] the movie till now.”
Clar and Reyes work with cinematographer Quintin P. Cu-Unjieng, while dancers KJ Canata, Ramona Yusay, Lex, Gaby Chavez, Jenris Garcia, and Paulline Angeles will be a part of the performances, both at the opening at 8 p.m. on Oct. 22, and 9 p.m. on Oct. 24, followed by a late-night artist talk at 9:30 p.m.
Elsewhere in the program, Filipino dance artist Garcia’s “Lore” examines cultural memory in dialogue with artificial intelligence, a continually pertinent topic today. Meanwhile, transfeminine multidisciplinary artist Cadag—known for a practice which engages with queer histories and precolonial gender plurality—presents “The Singer.”
Cadag’s work melds together theater, vocal music, craft, and movement, ruminating “on the trans body as sanctuary of feminine predicament and queer remembrance.” Since premiering in 2025 in Germany, its Philippine homecoming will be on Oct. 23 and 24 at 7 p.m.
Keep your Saturday afternoon free on Oct. 24 for Club Gigil, a much-anticipated two-part program featuring an artist talk and community jam with Japanese internet personality Tohru Dance. Well-known and well-loved for his spontaneous public dance videos that contrast with his professional life as a management consultant, his work is sure to bring a sense of play to the festival space.
Torrado is always someone you can’t miss, and the choreographer and Daloy Dance Company founder’s “Brown Madonna: Apparition” is described as “a maximalist fiesta aesthetic—an embodied pageantry that collides the sacred and the profane,” set to take place on Oct. 25 at 7:30 p.m.
Throughout, “Gigil” also extends into moving image with “Spectral Spectator” by Tarzeer Pictures, presenting “0001” by visual artist Axibal, who will present vignettes of an afterlife encounter, in a video installation starring Kurt Vicencio, Darla Mamuyac, Moses Webb, and Joaquin Silvestre, styled by Mano Gonzales.
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When we can no longer contain what we feel
Moving throughout the NBS Park, this seventh edition of Fifth Wall brings experimental art into a shared public space, merging with everyday life. Housed in the former National Book Store compound and factory—now a cultural community space—NBS Park shares Fifth Wall’s vision of making art accessible to more.
As National Book Store president and CEO Adrian Ramos puts it, “NBS Park was created with the belief that Filipinos deserve more spaces where culture, creativity, and community can come together. Our partnership with Fifth Wall is a natural extension of that vision.”
READ: October art calendar in Manila, Bacolod, and New York
For Reyes, Fifth Wall’s founder, the program moves emotions from the private to something shared.
“With this year’s festival, we’re interested in what happens when that feeling spills over into movement, sound, image, and space. What does it mean to let go of the need to contain ourselves?” Reyes says.
“With this year’s festival, we’re interested in what happens when that feeling spills over into movement, sound, image, and space. What does it mean to let go of the need to contain ourselves?”
“And what becomes possible when we allow our feelings to be seen, felt, and shared with others? Through the works in the program, we invite audiences to experience that tipping point between restraint and release—not just as spectators, but as bodies feeling alongside one another,” he adds.
So what does “gigil” really mean? The festival might just ask audiences to sit with their own experiences of pigil, ipon, and sabog, until they feel it in their bones. “What are we holding back?” one might ask.
And what happens when we finally let those feelings spill forth, gigil as heck?
Fifth Wall’s seventh festival edition, “Gigil” runs from Oct. 22 to 25 at NBS Park. Tickets are available online and on-site through HelixPay. Club Gigil with Tohru Dance is free with registration, and walk-ins can enter throughout the festival
