Love in the time of B cunaua

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[av_heading heading=’MY LIFE AS ART ‘ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=’30’ subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY PETER SOLIS NERY
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  1. MERRYMAKING

Tourists only see our cheerful festivals, where misery, or at least poverty, is not an option. Small wonder why the Philippines is known the world over as the “Land of Smiles.” We are a country of a thousand cheerful island festivals.

*

Matt was still admiring the billboard when a blue-green arm of a bakunawa slapped his back.

He turned to the costumed merrymaker who tried to give him a scary face.

Matt raised his hand to acknowledge the character, and gave the reveler a funky salute.

The bakunawa went on his way joining the parade of street dancers.

*

On the first day of the festival, the population of the island had grown more than five times its normal size.

There were as many dancers as on-lookers.

Some dance, some clap to the rhythm.

Many lost their inhibition.

*

People were costumed as the blue-green bakunawa, red shrimp, and lobsters with giant claws.

Girls in frilly brown or white dresses danced some kind of a jig with a mid-eastern twist: belly dancing, sexy shimmy, leaping movements, and dervish whirling.

The hand movements played with the tentacles of the sea monster, and with the claws of the shrimp and lobsters.

*

All the whirling made use of the wide skirts of the girls in both white and brownish frilly dresses.

The belly dance went along beautifully with the faux pregnant look of some women, with the bare midriff of girls in white.

One performer in a sea monster garb grabbed an on-looker, a pregnant character in a frilly brownish dress.

They danced in the middle of the parade.

*

After a while, the pregnant woman danced in wild abandon, taking so much delight in belly dancing and stylized Macarena as if possessed by some wild spirit.

Matt smiled on all this street dancing that amused and delighted the revelers.

More and more dancers reached out to the audience, more and more on-lookers joined the dance, and more and more dances were invented.

The festival was already in a twisted full-swing mode. (To be continued)/PN
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