Megaworld unveils P30-B township in Pampanga
SAN FERNANDO, PAMPANGA — Megaworld Corp. will be developing a P30-billion township in San Fernando, Pampanga over the next ten years, its first integrated project in Central Luzon.
Circus training is changing the lives of victims of sexual abuse
The circus came for the girls of Cameleon Association Philippines, a Visayas‑based non‑government organization (NGO) founded by French National Laurence Ligier in 1997. Through contortion, unicycling, acrobatics, juggling and hula hooping, the girls, who were abused sexually in the past, realized their strength and control of their bodies. On stage, they saw themselves beyond the trauma.
“We began the circus training program around ten years ago, and little by little we discovered that the girls who were quite introverted—sexual abuse survivors are often depressed or introverted—through circus training were gaining self‑confidence. They were showing their talent on stage, and to see people admiring them for what they are capable of, not talking about them just because of their past,” Ms. Ligier told SparkUp after the Metamorphosis circus performance held at the Mall of Asia Music Hall on May 29, which featured not only the girls from Cameleon but also self‑trained and professionally circus performers from France and Canada.
It was a French circus that contacted them first, she recalled. Around ten years ago, they told her that France was using circus training as therapy for sexual abuse survivors and asked if she wanted to do the same thing in the Philippines.
“I said why not, but we are not equipped to do that, because here in the Philippines the circus is not as well known as it is in other countries,” she said. “So I told them to come to Iloilo with their equipment and we’ll see if our girls and our staff like it. Filipinos like stage performances and dancing, so I knew it would work.” Cameleon built up on that program, inviting more professionals to train and work with their beneficiaries through workshops on different circus skills and how to set up a performance for a large audience.
During the She and She forum held on May 16, Cameleon Association Executive Director Claudine Sabio said that there are currently 110 girls between the ages of 6 to 23 under the organization’s Personal Rebuilding program, which aims to protect sexually abused girls and help them rebuild their lives through providing shelter, education, physical and mental health services, and legal service, among others. In approximately half of the cases that they handle, the perpetrators are members of the girls’ families.
In her presentation, Ms. Sabio shared testimonies of the girls that they have worked with who have regained their strength and their identities through circus training.
“When I performed during the circus—when the audience clapped their hands, when other people smiled at me, shook my hands, congratulated me—it was like I found myself again, I regained my identity. And at the back of my mind, I saw a little light of hope, and little by little, I built myself up again,” shared a girl named Joy.
“The circus has helped me to communicate with other people, because during the practices I need to communicate with the other girls to create a concept, we had to have team work and unity when practicing for the shows,” shared Tin.
While circus training, on its own, does not completely free her from her anxieties and the haunting memories of her abuse, for Ana it was the focus needed to perform circus acts that helped her. “All the negative energies were being pushed away from my mind subconsciously. And then I realized that I was opening myself up again, starting to be myself again, just like an ordinary child would,” she said.
But one does not need to be well-versed in circus training in order to help Cameleon with their noble cause. Ms. Ligier told SparkUp that volunteers who are skilled in sports, handicrafts, performance arts and the like, could go to Visayas and share their talents with the girls and their staff. For volunteers who prefer to stay in Manila, they could help through fund‑raising projects, translation work, writing articles, and raising awareness.
“There’s many ways to help, as long as they have a deep motivation,” Ms. Ligier said.
Chuck Berry revisits youth in posthumous album
CHUCK BERRY defined rock ‘n’ roll as he gave voice to feel-good 1950s baby boomer culture. For his swan song, he is reliving that same youthful spirit — and tidying up some loose ends.
The rock pioneer died in March just as he was planning an unlikely comeback; in October, for his 90th birthday, Berry had announced he was releasing a new album.
Entitled simply Chuck, the album comes out today, Friday, and marks the first studio recordings by Berry since 1979, with the 10 songs fine-tuned for release since his death.
Returning after three decades in which musical tastes have shifted in manifold ways, Berry stays true to his classic sound — tightly structured tunes rooted in the blues, with a touch of country and the electrifying energy that he called rock ‘n’ roll.
On Chuck, Berry signs off as forever young. His world at age 90 was the same one that embraced him in the 1950s — a lifestyle of driving fast cars, partying mischievously and checking out women.
The album kicks off with quintessential Berry, his verses alternating with frolicking yet brassy-toned guitar riffs, on “Wonderful Woman.”
In the song, Berry remains transfixed — who knows for how many years — by a woman with “big beautiful eyes” and “long, brown wavy hair” who showed up at his concert — in the second row, he recalls.
On the album’s first single, Big Boys, Berry remembers trying to befriend cool older schoolmates, with his enthusiastic guitar complemented by one of rock’s premier axe-men, Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine.
A WOMAN FOR JOHNNY B. GOODE
Berry recorded the album around St. Louis, where he lived his whole life, with his son and grandson and other artists who accompanied him for two decades in gigs at the Blueberry Hill club.
Berry dedicated Chuck to his wife of 68 years, Themetta Suggs. But he also appeared to want to close some of the musical stories he started.
Berry revisits 1958’s “Johnny B. Goode” — a song so famous that it represents rock ‘n’ roll to potential extraterrestrials on the Voyager spacecraft — with the new “Lady B. Goode.”
Nearly 60 years later, Berry has turned his classic song into a diptych. “Lady B. Goode” brings the perspective of “the little teen queen” who fell in love with someone who sounds an awfully lot like Johnny B. Goode — a humble country boy who finds fame with his guitar.
Berry, opening with a hard-driving R&B guitar riff similar to “Johnny B. Goode,” sings of her: “She followed him around where he would play his guitar / Till he got so popular they made him a star.”
“Then she could only see him on a TV screen / And hoped someday that he’d come back to New Orleans,” he sings.
BACK TO THE CARIBBEAN
Berry also revisits old territory on “Jamaica Moon,” a remake of his “Havana Moon” whose commercial flop in 1956 had irritated him.
For his second take of the song, Berry again imagines himself as a Caribbean boy waiting on a dock for an American girl who promised to return.
But this time, a bouncy guitar brings a touch of reggae as Berry sings in patois, “Me still alone, me sip on de rum.”
The original “Havana Moon” — acoustic with a Latin flavor — faded as Fidel Castro’s revolution soured Americans’ romance with Cuba, although the song was revived as a cover by Carlos Santana.
“Jamaica Moon” also echoes a lyric in another defining rock song, the famously indecipherable “Louie Louie.”
Berry’s sound goes most contemporary on “Dutchman” as he switches to spoken word over his blues guitar, telling the story of a dog who enters the bar and explains he was once a musician whose “music was considered superb.”
“He didn’t make the Hall of Fame, but it bought him shrimp, rice and beans.”
Berry, in real life, was one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. — AFP
