Tag: Michelle Anne P. Soliman

HOLY WEEK celebrations will commence on April 5 with the Catholic faithful expected to participate in their homes rather than in churches.

Cinemas, theaters, concert halls, and museums have all closed their doors since Luzon was placed on enhanced community quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic two weeks ago. Show openings, gigs, workshops, regional art festivals and conferences have either been postponed or canceled.

PREPARATIONS for Filipino Food Month 2020 have been “temporarily postponed,” the Philippine Culinary Heritage Movement, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), and Department of Agriculture announced on March 26.

CARITAS MANILA Inc., the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Manila’s social arm, is calling for cash donations for 6,000 poor communities in Metro Manila that are at risk in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

ACTORS live and breathe the story of a play or musical. They memorize lines, blocking, and choreography for months prior to sending its message to an audience.

RELIGIOUS groups are holding televised and online streaming worship services in response to the COVID-19 outbreak and the Luzon lockdown.

WHAT happens when an Egyptian police band ends up in the wrong town in Israel and has no way to leave before morning? Strangers change each other’s lives with a whole lot of singing.

SALCEDO AUCTIONS will hold its first major sale of the year with pieces by Justin Nuyda, Ang Kiukok, and H.R. Ocampo up for bid. Carrying the theme “Legacy Refined, the Important Philippine Art,” the sale will be held on March 14 at the NEX Tower, 6786 Ayala Ave., Makati City.

BOOKS, shows, and songs are not just words, they are ways of telling stories.

THE 15 etchings of the Predella series (1984) show a lady seated at a throne. She holds power despite her ignorance of the violence and unrest depicted at the bottom half of the frame.

OBJECTS and materials used in daily life are transformed into art at an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.

TWO Duncan MacMillan’s plays on modern love, climate change, and mental health will be restaged as The Sandbox Collective opens its 6^th season with Sandbox Fest 2020.

PETA Theater closes its 52^nd season with Under My Skin, a drama about Filipinos living with HIV.

ENTERING Resorts World Manila’s (RWM) newly opened signature dining outlet is like visiting a refurbished heritage home where you can enjoy familiar home cooked meals.

ATENEO de Manila University (ADMU) and De La Salle University (DLSU) have been long-time basketball rivals. But the universities set aside their rivalry and came together through a book.

AS SUNFLOWERS, petunias, bonsai plants, and rose cacti decorate the public spaces in the city of Baguio at this time of the year when it holds the Panagbenga Festival, visitors learn that neither earthquakes nor viruses can keep a good city down.

IT ALL began in 2007 when bookstore founders Andrew Yap and Jacqueline Ng established a 500-square-meter bookstore called BookXcess where remainder books from international distributors were sold. It was located in a neighborhood mall in Malaysia, “where you hardly see any customer walk pass,” as Ms. Ng described.

CONTEMPORARY artist Gig de Pio, Sr. departs from his usual portraits and revisits abstracts in Rustan’s For the Arts’ first exhibition this year.

THE STORY of a young girl named Matilda has told on the pages of books since 1988, on the big screen in 1996, and onstage since 2010. This year, the musical (that uses over 100 tubs of chocolate every year) comes to Manila -- its 63^rd city -- at the Theater at Solaire beginning March 5.

FOR the 8^th installment of Art Fair Philippines (AFP), the focus will be on the process of creating art.

THE commute from EDSA to Manila took an hour on the day before the Traslacion — Manila’s giant celebration of the Feast of the Black Nazarene. It was past the lunch hour when I arrived at the 1919 Grand Café (in what was formerly the HSCB Building) in Manila’s Binondo district.

VISUALIZING music is quite a challenge. But it was a challenge that was accepted by the The Center for Campus Art of the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, the result of which is Kay Ganda Ng Ating Musika: An Exhibit on the Life and Work of National Artist for Music Ryan Cayabyab, its third exhibit featuring National Artists and the its first focusing on music.

MODEKA Creative Space joins the roster of contemporary art galleries in La Fuerza 1 in Makati City.

DR. MENELINE WONG began painting in 2017 thanks to the influence of a friend and quickly found renown.

SIX YEARS since the entry of streaming services into the Philippines, Asian streaming platforms HOOQ and iflix have pronounced that the industry has emerged from infancy and consider 2019 a turning point, with more originals being produced and the entry of more players signifying that the Philippines has fully embraced a new way of consuming content.

THREE MONTHS after a fire ravaged the Star City complex destroying the Aliw and Star Theaters which was Ballet Manila’s home in the process, the dance company continues undaunted with the rest of the performances in its 24^th season.

“A POTTED plant in the middle of a corridor” is how Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Vice-President and Artistic Director Chris B. Millado described the state of the 50-year-old institution, adding that the plant is “not for decor but to catch leaks from the ceiling.”

TEN CONTEMPORARY art galleries come together for their first collaborative project, ALT Philippines 2020, on Feb. 14 to 16 at the SMX Convention Center Aura, SM Aura Premiere, BGC in Taguig City.

AWARD-WINNING writer Sylvia L. Mayuga passed away on Dec. 31, 2019 her friends and relatives announced through posts on social media. She was 77.

THE INITIAL idea was to use the 40 banigs — mats which had been woven in Basey, Samar — as gifts and room decor. It was the plan when Philippine Ambassador to Portugal Celia Anna M. Feria arrived in Lisbon in May 2017 to assume her post.

MERGING the past and present of Filipino culture through body movements is the focus of Filipino artist and 2019 Hugo Boss Asia Art awardee Eisa Jocson.

PHILIPPINE Stagers Foundation’s musical Sindak 1941 bagged five awards at the 32^nd ALIW Awards held on Dec. 17 at the Manila Hotel.

CANADIAN quick service restaurant Tim Hortons launched its holiday collection with the Dark Chocolate Iced Capp and Truffle Timbits.

TRAVELING AROUND the world and representing the Philippines as a diplomat was the plan. However, fate decided that Alice Reyes would spend her professional life dedicated to the art of movement. “I was going to be in foreign service,” the 2014 National Artist for Dance told BusinessWorld in an interview in November. After all, she had a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Foreign Services from Maryknoll College and completed post-graduate studies in Ateneo De Manila University.

THE COLORFUL canvases hanging in the Avellana Gallery illustrate positive words. In the aptly named exhibit Kumpas ng Kamay, the paintings feature hands spelling out words in Philippine Sign Language — and reading the gestures is not a problem a series of smaller paintings hung along the three walls serve as a guide to the English alphabet.

BUKLOG, the thanksgiving ritual system of the Subanen, an indigenous group in Zamboanga, is now inscribed in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) List of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH).

KOREAN CRAFTS and contemporary art are showcased at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila in celebration of the 70^th anniversary of Philippine-Korean bilateral relations.

UNLIKE most other kinds of art, posters are ephemeral — put up to make some sort of announcement then thrown away after the event.

THE CineFilipino Film Festival has announced the finalists for its fourth installment. Organized by Cignal TV and Unitel Productions, Inc, the film festival will showcase stories in feature length, shorts, and series categories by young and aspiring Filipino filmmakers.

A PERSON can get really tired after long hours of walking around the mall and rummaging through items on sale, so it is a relief to have a place where one can sit down and recharge over a light meal.

THE ARTS can influence our thoughts and actions in the face of a disease.

AS NOTED singer Bayan Barrios sang the National Anthem in the cool morning air on Monday, a giant Philippine flag was raised up the 105-foot tall Independence Flagpole -- the highest in the country -- in Manila’s Luneta park.

ELEMENTARY STUDENTS from public schools in Manila and the Camanava areas lined up at the Main Lobby of the Cultural Center of the Philippines on Nov. 20 to each receive a children’s book titled Kwentong Karapat-Dapat. The children then went to the corners of the lobby and a buzz started filling the air as they read from the book aloud.

FICTION WRITER, columnist, and radio and TV host Jessica Zafra routinely writes 1,000 words a day — a working method inspired by one of her favorite authors, Graham Greene, who wrote in his novel The End of the Affair (1951): “Over 20 years I have probably averaged 500 words a day for five days a week.”

A MASTER artist’s work is most of the time enjoyed by private owners (those who acquire it directly from the artist, the winning bidder at an auction, or heirloom keepers). But Filipino modernist painter Anita Magsaysay-Ho (1914-2012) believed that art is to be enjoyed by everyone.