This year, the UCF Filipino Student Association Dance Troupe has gathered enough students to prepare its members to showcase their Tinikling Filipino cultural dance for the first time at the Fusion Festival in Downtown Orlando on Nov. 26 at noon, directed by the Orange County Counselor.
John Duran, dance coordinator for FSA and third-year health science major, said the festival brings together over a hundred different cultures, highlighting music, dances, food, visual arts and various activities for Filipino American History Month. The FSA Dance Troupe will showcase their cultural heritage dance with women wearing traditional Filipiniana outfits and men will wear white tops and black pants with an ascot for their Tinikling dance event.
Duran said the FSA club is excited because it is their first time attending the Fusion Festival. The Fusion Festival brings together different cultural groups, but Duran said he was surprised to see a diverse range of participants this year, including Asian, Indian, and Middle Eastern people.
“October is our Filipino American History Month so this is also like in dedication to showcase to show our pride and to show our honor and how it feels like to be a Filipino American and make sure that we feel accustomed feel welcome and to make sure that we are here for everybody,” Duran said.
Duran said they will dance Tinikling for the Fusion Festival because is a very old and historical dance in the Philippines and he explained how they dance the choreography.
“Two pairs of partners will be like partnering up on the sticks and they pretty much like dance while the bamboo is tampering around their ankles,” Duran said.
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Sterling Lee, senior film student, was born in Germany, to a Filipino mom and an Afro-Cuban dad. Lee is a member of FSA and said it is the first time the FSA got the opportunity to participate in the Fusion Festival because it takes time, preparation, and enough students to participate.
Lee said that the Tinikling dance, which originated from the Visayan Islands in the Philippines, where his mom is from, is a popular traditional dance.
“The dance represents rice farmers trying to trap birds who are eating rice from their grains and the dance represents the birds jumping to the traps,” Lee said.
Duran said what makes their FSA dancing club and his team different is that they use different styles and different dances.
“Sometimes we even want to make it modernized because we feel like it is a nice mixture of the old generation and the new generation and we work around a modern song, but we have the implementation of dancing the Tinikling to it,” Duran said.
Kyle Garces, first-year nursing major and native Filipino student, said the reason he joined the Tinikling rehearsal was because when he was in the Philippines he never really did Tinikling even though he saw it a couple of times.
“So I wanted to be immersed in this part of the culture, and so far I have been here for an hour and it has been fun, and I will continue to do it,” Garces said. “As a beginner so far is pretty hard because it has a lot of coordination with your feet, but it is fun with practice it will definitely come.”
Isabel Sophia Lamosao, a third-year health science pre-clinical track and a second-generation immigrant from Filipino parents from Manila and Cebu, said she learned the Tinikling in elementary school in 2013 and then stopped around 2018, so she is getting more practice with the FSA Club.
“This is my first time going back to Tinikling, so I am a bit rusty,” Lamosao said. “We are going to have practices like two times a week so hopefully we will be ready by that time.”
Garces said he is excited to perform in front of everybody on a stage because it is his first time.
“I am very excited because like I don’t really perform on stage a lot, and I get nervous a lot so it will be something to help me calm down my nerves and to like experience it for the first time,” Garces said.
Lee said the festival provides a rare opportunity to showcase Filipino culture, particularly in areas of the U.S. where there is limited exposure to it.
“I am very excited to do Fusion Fest especially for like as a first time do it because I really enjoy showcasing Filipino cultures, especially considering like in the US it’s not as well known,” Lee said “So it is really nice to show it off and introduce people to it.”
Lee said he is mostly motivated by this event because the Filipino culture and its dances hold a special personal connection to his mother and grandmother, who he calls “Lola.”
“First time I did it, I was in middle school it was a cultural thing and my ‘Lola’ was like ‘we know you are far and we don’t get to see you all the time so this is a way to be connected this is a way to get you connected to our Filipino culture and your heritage and roots,'” Lee said. “So, that is my connection to Tinikling and how I really enjoy doing that dance.”
FSA members said that there are other new additions to the team, that will be added this semester. Lee said that FSA has several pillars, such as hip-hop, modern dance, cooking and baking, but they added a new language native Tagalog workshop this semester to promote Filipino culture among its members to help them maintain their native language or help them learn it.
“Sometimes you know parents don’t teach it, or you don’t get introduced to it, or it gets lost over time, so it’s like re-introducing it,” Lee said.
Duran said the FSA will add a new dance routine to their annual campus Pegasus Ball event where they showcase their Filipino dances.
“I have been thinking of bringing Singkil which is a more traditional slow dance where it is more like majestic more graceful,” Duran said. “There is going to be fans. There is going to be some of the bamboo sticks, is more of like a serenade, it is more like to feel more welcoming and more meditating.”
Lee said sharing the Filipino culture with students is like having a family.
“One thing about the Filipino culture is you are always going to feel like family,” Lee said.