Category Archives: Folk Dance

Tinikling (Filipino Folk Dance)

Nationality: American
Age: 64
Occupation: Attorney

Text
Tinikling is a Filipino folk dance. Originating during the Spanish occupation of the Philippines, farmers would use bamboo traps to keep animals away from their crops.  However, the Philippine tikling bird was able to bypass the traps and reach the crops, which is what Tinikling is said to be named after. This dance itself mimics the movements of the tikling bird and was also created to deter birds from the land. There is also another legend associated with tinikling. When the Spaniards had colonized the Philippines, the native Filipinos were forced to work on plantations. As the story goes, those who didn’t comply with the orders from the Spanish leaders had to stand between two bamboo poles while they were clapped together and thus injured their feet. So, the Filipino people would jump to avoid this pain, and this form of punishment turned into a traditional folk dance in the Philippines. 

Context
My informant for this story is my dad (VG), who said he remembers hearing the story and seeing Tinikling performed for the first time when he was a kid.  The Filipino dance of Tinikling involves two long bamboo rods, at least six feet in length.  Two people play the role of clappers while the dancers stand between the bamboo poles.  The apparel of the dancers is often traditional Filipino clothing, for example, a Barong Tagalog for men.  The dancers will step and jump while the clappers continuously clap the bamboo poles together according to the rhythm.  My dad’s mom told him something about birds dancing or flying from branch to branch, and someone else had told him that birds were hopping to avoid bird traps.

Interpretation
I’m curious about the possible origins.  While both could be just as likely, it makes me wonder if they were both true but different sides of the same story, one more appropriate for younger audiences.  Or perhaps one or neither is perfectly accurate, and stories and embellishments were developed to accompany the dance.  Either way, Tinikling is an extremely impressive folk dance that requires lots of skill while also bringing Filipino communities together.

Luddi

The informant is one of my Pakistani friends who has lived in many different countries, yet is very attached to the culture of his heritage and is very involved in the rituals, ceremonies and overall traditions that are tied to his roots in Pakistan.

Dance:

The informant describes this dance, the Luddi, as a “circular formation that people dance to”. This dance entails the “clapping of their hands and spinning in circles as they are still moving in a circle.” Although the dance is not usually performed for a certain scenario or moment, it is “usually done at celebrations and ceremonies like weddings and dinners with the family” who are brought together and dance to specific songs that link to the informant’s culture. He describes his times watching the Luddi as a “coming together when [they] have not seen each other in a long time” and celebrating the family or a certain event happening at the time. It is always performed in Pakistan when the entire family joins, his family always visits to “celebrate their cousins, aunts, uncles and all the elders that have given us the privilege we have” conveying the importance of the dance in Punjabi culture.

Context:

The Luddi is typically done with “the group of women in the family that are important to the celebration or occasions” and this can range from “family of the groom or bride in a wedding or the parents and siblings of the birthday person.” The joining together of the women in a circle gives them a chance to “celebrate in a space without the men involved”. Although it is usually performed by older women in the family, younger women around the age of the bride and/or person of significance are able to join the dance and “learn the significance of what it means to become an adult woman” in the family that has their culture embedded into their daily lives. Luddi is msot typically seen in the winter and spring when all the family members come back from their travels for the wedding season, therefore, it allows the women to not only celebrate the occasion but also the family and other women.

Analysis:

The formation of a circle as part of the dance highlights the cycle of their culture and the generations that come together to form a chain that connects. It is creating a personal connection between the women of the family in that certain moment, growing as the girls grow and join the dance to celebrate each other. The clapping of their hands emphasises the celebration of the occasion and also creates a unified sound that the woman can sing and dance to, establishing their heritage and Punjabi culture in the form of performance and expression of their joy into feelings. The incorporation of this dance at weddings, which is also presented to be an important and momentous part of the culture in South Asia, highlights how the family is the base of their culture and even the women have their own traditions and rituals that create unity. Furthermore, the circle growing highlights the chain of Punjabi women in the family growing and the representation of the elders teaching the younger traditions to keep the culture alive.

Swedens National Dance

Text: 

The Hambo

Context: 

Collector: “Give us a brief history on practice and use of the Hambo.” 

Informant: “The Hambo is Swedens national dance, and is a couple’s dance that originated in the late 19th century and became popular across Sweden and other Nordic countries. It is characterized by its graceful, flowing movements and the use of a gliding step that gives the dance a smooth and fluid quality. The music for the Hambo is typically played on a fiddle or accordion and has a lively, upbeat tempo. The dance is usually performed at traditional Swedish celebrations, such as Midsommar, festivals, and weddings. It is more often taught in schools as part of physical education and is sometimes performed by professional dance troupes.“

Collector: “How did Hambo play a role in your life?“

Informant: “Dancing is a very integral part of Scandinavian celebrations and ceremonies, symbolizing joy, unity, and tradition. My father made me start Scandinavian dancing from a young age, so it has just become a part of who I am. From this I have developed a tremendous appreciation for dance, which brings a joy I cannot obtain from anything else.“

Analysis:

The Hambo seems to play a crucial role as a performance in the carrying out of many Swedish traditions, which makes sense since it comes from a nordic country. Sweden is a small nordic country, regions known for having rich, nationally recognized folklore. These countries typically weaponized folklore against the presence of outside, unwelcomed invaders during the 19th and 20th centuries. With this weaponization comes a greater sense of nationalism, and as a result, spurs the interconnectedness of its peoples and cultures. This way, countries like Sweden are able to act more like a single body, and strengthen themselves under their unity. Larger, more powerhouse countries like France, the UK, or the USA, did not require such weaponization for their strength was more industrial as opposed to cultural. This is why you see a weak, distilled presence of folklore within all of them.

Tinikling

Text:

The tinikling is a dance performed by Filipino people where the dancers hop between two bamboo poles held on either side by other performers, as the bamboo poles are tapped on the ground in a specific rhythm.

Context:

The informant is 67, was born and raised in the United States, and whose parents were born and raised in the Philippines. She performed this dance for school as part of physical education and sometimes for school performances. The dance was taught by the school as the national dance of the Philippines. 

Analysis:

Tinikling, the national folk dance of the Philippines, is a dance inspired by the movements of the bird that it is named after. Though there are many stories about the origin of this dance, the one with most historical context is that it arose among the indigenous Filipino people after Spanish colonists would punish the Filipino people working in their plantations by smacking their feet with bamboo sticks. Therefore, the form of folk dance that evolved from this punishment serves as an act of rebellion against past colonization and occupation, as well as a celebration of Filipino heritage. The dance is performed not only in the Philippines, but survives in the younger generations who perform the dance, usually in cultural clubs at universities.

Dabke

Nationality: American, Lebanese-American
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 3/26/23
Language: English, Arabic

[L]: For weddings, we always have like specific instruments for like the ceremony. We have tabals, which are a certain kind of drum that will be at every wedding, every Lebanese wedding reception. There’s also the darbuka which is another type of drum and then there’s also a little like flute…I don’t really know what it’s called but if you googled “lebanese flute” you could find it. [I did google it, and it’s called a zamour] And those three instruments are essential for Lebanese weddings.

[Me]: Do you happen to know why?

[L]: Well those are just the instruments that are used for all parties, aka hafle, but those instruments are just like at the center of almost all like party music and they’ve all been used in the region forever. You’ll find variations of those instruments in every other country in the Middle East..but yeah.

[Me]: Are there particular types of songs that they play? Or even a particular mood or tone or rhythm of them?

[L]: Usually very upbeat, um, and the mood or rhythm…there’s a very iconic Lebanese party music if you look up Faris Karam, he’s a very….iconic singer and his songs will always be at weddings. There’s also a dance that we do called dabke and we do that at all of our parties and weddings.

L is 20 years old and a student at USC. She grew up in Michigan, but spent most summers in Lebanon with family. Her dad grew up in Lebanon and immigrated to the United States in his early 20s, and her mom grew up in the United States in a Lebanese immigrant family. L has been to multiple Lebanese weddings—though only in the United States—so this information comes from her first-hand experiences as well as her general knowledge of Lebanese culture from her upbringing. 

I was fortunate enough to attend a USC Lebanese, Egyptian, Persian club crossover event with L very shortly after conducting this interview, and was able to experience and witness dabke first-hand. The dance didn’t make an appearance until about 2 hours had gone by of vibrant Arabic music blasting all around, but when it did surface, it was unstoppable. There was no distinction between those of Lebanese or Egyptian or Persian origin, this was a moment of people coming together to perform a dance that they knew as well as their own names. The most wonderful part of dabke, in my humble opinion, is that it works in a similar fashion to a conga line—participants can keep joining at the end of the chain—but instead of being linear, the front of the line begins to spiral inward to create a sort of pinwheel of people, all holding hands and united in dance. It makes perfect sense that this would be a dance performed at weddings and other celebrations alike—upon doing a little bit of research, I found that the dance has ties to community, family bonding, and resilience: “A simple message of locking arms together, stomping to the ground, and singing or chanting has left a deep mark in the culture…it unifies us against our oppressor” (Dabke Dance: A Shared Tradition of the Levant). Dabke is a folk dance known well in regions like Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, where people live and die by their connections to their family and community. Speaking to the specific wedding performance of dabke, a wedding is a liminal period in one’s life, and thus a dance promoting and encouraging resilience and unity would serve to reassure the newlyweds and make sure that they know they have the strength and love of the community behind them. All in all, dabke is a beautiful manifestation of the dearly held beliefs, ideals, and traditions of both Lebanese and other middle-eastern cultures.