Community-based performance in the Philippines: data

This collection contains approximately 5000 photographs and 1000 video clips from 2006 to 2012, taken by William Peterson, a researcher at Monash University. These document a range of community-based performance traditions from 12 field sites on the islands of Luzon, Panay, Marinduque, and Cebu; the sites include those in and around Metro Manila, the Cordillera in and around Baguio, Boac in Marinduque, Kalibo in Panay, Cutud in San Fernando, Pampanga, and the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center. Many events are associated with religious performances and festivals held during Holy Week, which re-enact the Passion and in which an entire community is mobilised to create, perform in, and witness a mass spectacle. Other events such festivals honouring the Santo Niño, indigenous gatherings, folk dance-inflected “street dancing,” competitive dance spectacles and parades, organised dance in prison, and transgendered spectacles for tourist consumption also feature prominently in the visual record. The photographs reflect what the researcher asserts as the country’s most significant performance practices in that they engage the largest share of the creative and productive capacities of the greatest number of Filipinos over extended periods of times, marking the Philippines as one of the world’s leading performance-focused cultures. Local communities in the neighbourhoods (barangay) of cities large and small throughout the country have their own distinctive iterations of performance practices that typically culminate each year in one or more festivals of five or more days in duration. Although these practices reflect the many external influences that have been absorbed over centuries, the performances are deeply rooted in local practices which pre-date colonisation. The photos from 2006-2007 were taken on digital camera with a poor quality lens and low pixilation while those taken from 2008-2011 were shot on a 35mm Panasonic Lumix camera with a Leica lens and an 18x zoom.