Lakbai Diwa
Diasporic Spirit
2020–2021
SOMA Pilipinas, San Francisco
VISION
Lakbai Diwa is a 2020 multi-disciplinary project that explores ancestral oceanic culture of survival, resilience, and prosperity with over 35 participating Diasporic and Philippine artists and cultural practitioners. Project activities bridge indigeneity with contemporary artistic experiences that represent the resilience and transformative values of the diasporic Pilipinx people.
INSPIRATION | SPIRIT BOATS
Designed by Carlito Camahalan Amalla of the Manobo Tribe and fabricated by Kapampangan master carvers brothers John, Doy, and Ronald Yumul.
Boats are an essential part of life and culture of our people in the archipelago for thousands of years. With various types and sizes, boats are meticulously designed as vessels to serve a specific purpose such as for homes, transportation, fishing, trade, exploration, war, as well as recreation. The diverse types of boats include lepa, bangka, paraw, baroto, vinta, kakap, karakoa, and balangay.
Boats are an integral aspect of our indigenous spirituality. Water vessels exemplify the balance we seek in life. In the Mindanaoan Ipat ritual, the spirit boat is a vehicle for communing with the spirit world and the higher self. The spirit boat carries the offerings and prayers to the sacred deities or energies of the five elements for a balanced world.
The spirit boat is vessel to journey between the corporeal and the spiritual realm. It is also a transitory state between life and death, and life, again. In pre-colonial times in parts of Luzon, it was said that the coffin of the dead was loaded on a bangka down the river to the open sea.
Lakbai Diwa explores the ways we navigate our lives in the diaspora, our ways of healing and wellness, and the values that we bring on our journeys.
Survival, Resilience And Collective Healing
Kenneth Rainin Foundation
Over the course of the pandemic, Bay Area artists reimagined performances and projects in powerful ways. One inspiring example is Lakbai Diwa: Diasporic Spirit, featured in the above video, which celebrated the resilience and transformative values of the diasporic Pilipinx people. The Filipino-American Development Foundation, KULARTS and lead artist Alleluia Panis created this project with 35 participating Diasporic and Pilipinx artists and cultural practitioners. The project took place in 2020 and 2021 and featured large-scale ceremonial processions, dance performances and temporary mural painting. These activities centered indigeneity to bring visibility and collective healing to the Pilipinx community in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood.
With this visionary project now completed, we invited Alleluia Panis, the lead artist and Artistic Director, to reflect on creating this sacred and meaningful project during the pandemic. Check out her reflection here.
PAST EVENTS
Creative Team
Muralists
Performers
Dance Artists
LEARN MORE
Mandala-making Video Series
by Rosalie Zerrudo
During these challenging times, slowing down to create an intentional mandala or assemblage alone or together with family or friends can help calm the mind and reduce anxieties and stresses. We invited artist, educator and environmentalist Rosalie Zerrudo to produce a 3-part video series to introduce ways we can explore indigeneity through culturally meaningful mandala-making. We can use everyday items to create a mandala for our visual expression of healing, gratitude, peace and well-being. Place the mandala on your altar or any place inside or outside your home. Light an incense or candle as a symbol of releasing your intentions.
Ma Rosalie Abeto Zerrudo–Multidisciplinary Artist, Master Artist in Residence, Inday Dolls, PDL 700%–bridges multi-characters as performance and visual multi-media poet artist. Her background in BA Psychology and MA Educational Theater (New York University) enriched her people-centered and process-based heartwork. She combines her community-engaged culture-based art practice as a creative process called soul work. Zerrudo currently serves as Assistant Professor at College of Fine Arts and Humanities at University of San Agustin, Iloilo, Philippines.
Invocation Celebration Remembrance Transcendence
A poetic meditation performed by Kristen Cabildo with poem by Noelle de la Paz.
Bahala Na: An Offering to My Father, Erleen Paus
By Earl Alfred Paus
“This past February, my dad and I so happen to be in the Philippines at the same time and we didn’t even know it! I was planning my very first trip to the Motherland with Kularts, and my dad was going to be there for his Class of 1967 high school reunion. Thanks to divine timing, we were able to spend a week there together. I got to see where he grew up, meet more of his family and hang out with his close friends. That was the last time I saw him in person. I wouldn’t have changed that week for anything else in the world. I hope through this tribute you get to see how much my dads life means to me through the eyes of an artist, actor, and son.”
Earl Alfred Paus has been a featured theater artist in Kularts productions since 2018. He participated in the indigenous Maguindanaoan Ipat Ritual as a member of the Kularts 2020 TribuTurista.
Mandala Creations
A digital gallery featuring intentional mandala creations, as visual expressions of healing, gratitude, peace, and well-being. Arranging objects with symbolic meanings into a mandala can help reduce anxieties and stresses of the day.
We invite you to create your own mandala. Email photographs to program@kularts-sf.org.
Somerah Cruz-Louie
Spirit Boat Offerings
As our creative response to the pandemic, lead artist Alleluia Panis invited a number of Pilipinx artists to participate in creating a ritual/prayer/meditation to their own imagined protective spirits. They were tasked to honor and conjure the success of our ancestors’ oceanic journeys by creating Spirit Boat Offerings with objects symbolic of survival and wellness.
Contributing Artists
Aimee Amparo has been combining music, spiritual work & healing arts, and travel for 9 years. Her journeys have taken her around the world from India to the Middle East, Brazil, Mexico and most recently the southern Philippine islands. Each song is a connection to the other, revealing a shared human experience. Each journey is connection to source, an indigenous wisdom which reveals a common thread; an understanding of earth, spirit, and community and their relation to self. She uses music to tell the stories that have been passed down to her and to create intention for the future.
Marcella Pabros-Clark is founder and facilitator in Creating Stories that Heal and Reset, Rebalance and Remember, each ongoing workshops where she guides participants through inner-journeys to unearth and reshape the stories they have held for themselves that no longer serve them. Utilizing exercises in breath work, vocal toning, intuitive movement as well as auto-writing and drawing, participants are encouraged to “get out of their heads and into their bodies” and to reconnect with their ability to “create” their world
As an interdisciplinary artist sharing her visions via multi-media, her work embraces the audience with visceral theatrical experiences: melding story with interactive movement, sound and song, video, photographic and animated imagery that entertains, informs and educates. Her most solo piece HEALING MARS received four separate commissions over three years (NewTown Arts and TeAda Productions, respectively), and a generous grant from the Durfee Foundation’s Artist Resource for Completion Funds. HEALING MARS soundly engages each spectator with compelling universal stories that unfold for all to discover the healing power of their own unique voice.
Marcella has studied and performed a variety of ethnic music, dance and martial arts forms including: Congolese with the late Master dancer/drummer Malonga Casquelourd; Brazilian Samba with Jose Lorenzo (music & dance), Jacque Barnes, Pilar Leto and Conceicao Damasceno; Haitian with Blanche Brown and Afro-Cuban with Judith Justiz, Katie Hernandez and Juan Carlos Bianco (music and dance); Philippine Folk with Enriqueta Pabros and Alleluia Panis; Kulintang (music & dance) with Danongan Kalanduyan and Usopay Cadar; Aikido & Arnis (Philippine stick fighting) with Guru Eli; Wade-Ru Karate with Harry Wade; 3-Circles Martial Arts with Kelvin De Wolfe. She is a co-founder of Kulintang Arts (www.kularts.org), and was an active Screen Actors Guild and American Federal of Television and Radio Artists member. Her film and TV credits include: The Prankster, Jack, Steve McQueen: A True Hollywood Story and Nash Bridges. She is also a certified Reiki (II), Crystal Healing and Vocal Sound Healing practitioner. She currently performs traditional Philippine music and dance with Kultura Kapwa of Manilatown Heritage Foundation of San Francisco.
Christine Joy Amagan Ferrer (AKA Tine) is the the founder of Eyes Opened (EO), eomvmnt.org and a multidisciplinary creative who brings creative excellence to design, publishing and editorial projects. She deliver solutions for community organizations and individuals acting for the greater good. Areas of focus include: design, web/print media, publishing, editorial, and web maintenance. She is also a cultural movement and arts practitioner; an eclectic soul inspired by Afro-diasporic/folkloric rhythms, dedicated to youth and community.
Carlito Camahalan Amalla, PhD a member of the Manobo Indigenous Peoples of Agusan, Southern Philippines, Amalla is a visual artist, puppeteer, and music and dance performer who has toured internationally throughout Europe, Asia and the United States. He studied wayang kulit (traditional form of puppet-shadow play) in Indonesia and bunraku, Japan’s traditional form of puppet theatre. He performed in Papet Pasyon, Papet Ramayana, Papet Maskara, Papet Kalikasan and at the International Puppetry Festival – Bangkok. His solo exhibitions include “Pasaog” (2019) in New York City, “Tribu” (2016) in Belgium, and “Paglantaw” (2014) at the University of the Philippines. Amalla is also professor at De La Salle-College of St Benilde, School of Design & Art in Manila.
Jonathan Mercado is an inter-disciplinarian Filipino-American artist born within the bay area. As a part of the Filipino diaspora within the U.S. he has often looked to discover more about his Filipino heritage and culture through movement. His movement is inspired through his experiences of hip-hop/urban choreography and Filipino folk dancing. He currently dances with Kularts under director Alleuia Panis and Parangal Dance Company under director Eric Solano. His passion will continue to guide his efforts of discovering his own dance vocabulary that reflects his personal experiences.
Joshua Icban is a composer/musician/performer born and raised in Vallejo, CA. His work utilizes multigenerational sounds and techniques to compose living reactions to the world he has experienced and been exposed to. He has worked with Bay Area groups such as Awesome Orchestra, Cellista, the San Francisco state Gospel and Afro Cuban Ensembles and Bindlestiff Studios as either a performer or arranger.
He received his undergraduate degree in Jazz performance from San Francisco State in 2014 and masters in ethnomusicology at Cal State East Bay where his research focuses on Fil-Am music in the bay area diaspora. He composed original music score for In the 'Belly of the Eagle: Man@ Is Deity'.
Kawayan Perlarose Bolick Ong is a part of the new generation of Filipino American artists in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a cast member of the Kularts production In the Belly of the Eagle: Man@ng is Deity.
Patricia Marie Barretto Ong
Behind the scenes look at the making
of the boat sculptures
Eleven 2-ft carved boats designed by visual & performing artist/educator Carlito Camahalan Amalla of the Manobo Tribe and fabricated by Kapampangan master carvers brothers John, Doy, and Ronald Yumul. Inspired by indigenous weaving, tattoo and carving patterns, and tribal pre-Islamic Maguindanaon sacred Ipat ritual/ceremonies use of boat as the vessel for the sacred self journey towards state of transcendence.
