The Other: Ariel [2020]
The product of a three-year gestation across residencies in New York, Bali, and Zambales, The Other: Ariel introduces the eponymous alien mermaid spirit arriving on planet earth during a climate of fear and despair. She reveals herself to a live audience via the artist taking the role of a "spirit channeler". The performance brings to surface the darker realities of a country in the time of a planetary crisis, an all-out war on drugs, and the collapse of truth as experienced by those who are considered to be "not like us".
The piece was premiered in early 2020 during the Zambulat Music and Arts Festival as the artist's first offering in his residency with the Casa San Miguel Center for the Arts in San Antonio.
Postcard [2017]
Postcard is a choreographic reportage on President Duterte's murderous reign in the Philippines. Presented in the context of the Cultural Center of the Philippines Choreographer's Series for Koryolab 2017, the work is the artist's first ensemble piece after receiving the Alvin Erasga Tolentino Choreography Award. In Postcard, he culls from the body histories of his collaborators, employing a movement vocabulary that encompasses Butoh, sign language, hula, and macho dancing to paint a psychological portrait of the Philippines during one of the most violent drug wars in history.
D Original Oracle at DelPilar [2016]
Under the light of a full moon, an Oracle answers questions from his audience-supplicants. Improvising answers via poetry, movement, and song, he is joined by a pair of musicians as they hold a space for inquiry, laughter, and hope in a world facing a bleak future under the rise of fascism at home and abroad.
Its maiden performances at Papet Museo were commissioned for the Karnabal Performance Festival in 2016, an experimental theater platform facilitated by Sipat Lawin Ensemble.
.jpg)
Happy. [2011]
Happy. follows the journey of its eponymous hero as they wander in search of their missing human. The piece spins the idiom "the pursuit of happiness"—and imagines the archetypal abstract object of desire as that which actually seeks us. A meditation about the retrieval of one's inherent curiosity for life, Happy. is the artist's second performance piece on the ontology of an alter-ego. It has been presented in various venues and alternative spaces in the Philippines such as Diwata Galeri, Bantawan Theatre, The Living Room. and the Cebu City Museum.
Madame B. [2011]
His first experimental theater piece to feature an alter ego, Madame B. is an excorism for the abandoned demonstrated by the artist for a live audience. Presenting an alternative cathartic healing method, the artist gives time and space for the pain and sorrow of a breakup to take the shape of the mad abandoned lover. He enjoins the stories of his community and invites the audience as veritable witnesses to the melodramatic confessions and histrionics only unrequited love forces us to express. Madame B. (initially titled Mdm B. Niyaan is Russ Ligtas) has been performed since 2011 across platforms such as Diwata Galeri (2011), The Living Room(2012), Cinema Rehiyon (2013), the Visayas Biennale[2014], and the Metropolitan Museum of Manila (2015).
Am, But [2010]
Performed last at the Dancehallerne in 2015 for the P-Noise Festival in Copenhagen, Am, But is a meditative butoh dance piece that traces the artist's body of history—from the naiveté and trauma of his pre-colonial roots to the current cultural and societal impositions it endures. Among various venues in the Philippines, Am, But was showcased at the 7th Wifi Body Independent Contemporary Dance Festival at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 2014.
.jpg)
