Arts & Culture (01/25/23)

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Art Lounge Manila holds Lunar New Year show

THE YEAR of the Water Rabbit is marked by Art Lounge Manila through the exhibit “Auspicious Beginning 88” as a way to convey the wish of good luck, peace, stability, and prosperity that the year of the Rabbit is said to bring.�� The exhibit features a selection of Filipino-Chinese artists brought together by visual artist Addie Cukingnan. They are Addie Cukingnan, Meneline Wong, Charlie Co, Ronnie Lim, Dexter Sy, Rudy Yu, Ed Uygongco, Seb Chua, Elena Coyiuto, Tracie Anglo Dizon, Jo Uygongco, Victor Ng, Kylo Yu, Winna Go, and Margarita Lim. The exhibition will run until Jan. 31 at Art Lounge Manila at the Podium, Ortigas Center. For more information, visit .

Ang Huling el Bimbo is looking for Ligaya

AFTER auditions last year, Newport World Resorts’ Full House Theater Company (FHTC) has announced the new cast of the hit Ang Huling El Bimbo The Musical which will be staged in April at the Newport Performing Arts Theater. The search is now on for a child actress to play the role of Ligaya. The role is open to female children ages eight to 12 who are fluent in Tagalog. Interested parties must send a three-minute audition video singing a Tagalog song, together with their CV, and half-body photo. Send the requirements to [email protected] and indicate “Ligaya Audition” in the subject. The submission period is from Jan. 23 to 5 p.m. on Jan. 31. Those who will qualify will be contacted for an in-person audition at a later date.

Korean center presents fairytale-themed exhibit

THE EXHIBIT “Once Upon A Time… Hanbok Fairytale of Wooh Nayoung,” a reimagined world of fairytales with Korean twist, runs until Feb. 28 at the Korean Cultural Center (KCC) in the Philippines. Artist Wooh Nayoung’s experience in majoring in Korean painting and working in a game company led to creating her own style combining Western and Eastern characteristics. She is currently promoting the beauty of the traditional Korean dress, the hanbok, to the world through her work and collaborations with Hollywood and Disney. The exhibit is meant to make the visitor feel like they had stepped into a giant fairytale book. Princess characters like Cinderella and Rapunzel are dressed in hanbok and their animal friends are as well. In the children section of KCC’s library, a coloring station has been set up for visitors to reimagine their own fairytales. Visitors who show themselves enjoying the exhibition in their social media can present their posts at the KCC reception area to get a set of postcards. The Korean Cultural Center in the Philippines is located at 59 Bayani Rd, Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City. It is open from Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is free. Guests are advised to bring their vaccination card to present upon entry. A maximum of 60 people is allowed inside the building at a time for health and safety regulations.

The Pasinaya festival is back

PASINAYA, the multi-arts festival, returns onsite at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Complex and other outdoor venues on Feb. 3 to 5. The festival highlights the complex’s different outdoor venues such as the CCP Front Lawn, Liwasang Kalikasan, Tanghalang Ignacio B. Gimenez, and its surroundings, and parade ground of Vicente Sotto Street, among others. “This year, Pasinaya follows the theme ‘Piglas Sining.’ We are breaking away from the notion that the CCP is just the building.�� We are emphasizing that CCP can be anywhere,” said CCP artistic director Dennis N. Marasigan. Pasinaya continues its experience-all-you-can, pay-what-you-can scheme. For a suggested donation of P50, participants may go in and out of the different CCP venues to attend the 30-minute workshops in various art disciplines conducted by leading artists, resource persons and teachers, or watch as many shows, screenings, and activities as they can. Registration starts at 6:30 a.m. at the Bukaneg side of the Front Lawn and at Vicente Sotto Street. On Feb. 3, there will be a Pagtitipon, an invitational gathering of the Kaisa sa Sining (KSS) regional partners. There are 59 regional partners from Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao in the KSS network, with three new partners joining. Palihan and Palabas happen on Feb. 4 and 5, kicking off at the CCP Front Lawn with a parade and special program. In Palihan, audiences can join the different workshops, and in Palabas they can watch unlimited shows, featuring more than 3,000 artists from different art fields. Pasinaya partners with various galleries, museums and art spaces around the metro to put the spotlight on communal artistic spirit and collaborations. For this segment, the Paseo Museo, there will be hop-on, hop-off shuttle vans that will go around the participating arts spaces for free on Feb. 4 and 5. Meanwhile, festival programmers and art groups will meet in Palitan on Feb. 4 and 5, on-site at Tanghalang Ignacio Gimenez and online via Zoom. For updates, visit the social media accounts.��

Salcedo Auctions announces new auctions

SALCEDO Auctions will be mounting the Gavel&Block “art + design” auction on Feb. 4. It features modern and contemporary art, and furniture, jewelry, watches, designer pieces, and other collectibles. A special section is dedicated to Scrapboards by Project Re-Dew — surfboard sculptures created out of PET bottles upcycled into resin and wood fragments from the aftermath of Super Typhoon Rai (Odette) — which are being sold to help rebuild the surfing town of Siargao. The auction preview will run from 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. daily except Sunday and Monday until Feb. 3 at NEX Tower, 6786 Ayala Ave., Makati City. Salcedo Auctions also announced that its auction, “The Well-Appointed Life,” will now be held twice a year, in March and September. The auction features important Philippine art, heirloom furniture and decor in the “Connoisseur Collection,” a collection of fine jewelry and timepieces, and rare automobiles. For more information, visit .

Artbook.ph’ offers new books for the new year

ARTBOOKS.PH has a new selection of books for the new year. Among the books are: Cuenca: Sketchbook of a Spanish Hill Town (₱6,000) in which artist Fernando Zóbel shares his memories in Cuenca, Spain from 1963-1965 through annotated drawings in ink and watercolor; Bullfighting in the Philippines, 1602-2022 (₱999) by Gaspar A. Vibal, which is the most comprehensive Philippine taurine history to date; Heritage Churches of the Cagayan River Basin (₱699) by Javier Galván Guijo, part of the Fifty Shades of Philippine Art series by Vibal, is a comprehensive architectural survey of the major heritage churches of the Spanish colonial era that were built due to the evangelical efforts along the Río Grande de Cagayan and includes the history of a church and its urban settlement, the description of its features, the measurement and typification of its major architectonic elements, and a critique of its aesthetics and conservation aspects; When We Danced (₱3,575), a photobook by Eddie Boy Escudero which captures the vibrant and liberated 1990s club scene in Manila; and CATipunan: Furrtraits Vollumes 1, 2, and 3 (P150 each) which are collections of written and visual portraits of cats produced for International Cat Day (Aug. 8) in 2022.

Virgin Labfest is looking for plays

NOW in its 18^th year, the Virgin Labfest (VLF), the annual theater festival of unpublished, unstaged, untried, and untested works, is now open for script submissions for its 2024 edition. Deadline for submission is midnight on Feb. 28. Entries must be submitted in doc or pdf format only to [email protected]. The call for script submissions is open to all Filipino citizens only.�� Entries should have a maximum running time of 40 minutes. The festival is open to various themes and genres. All submitted works must not have been previously published in book form, staged commercially for more than two performances (staged readings and/or one-time workshop productions are allowed), or have not received any recognitions and awards in competitions and the like. Script entries may be in Filipino, English, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, or Ilocano, but should be submitted with accompanying Filipino translations.�� Entries in other Filipino languages will also be considered based on availability and capability of performers. A partnership project of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, The Writer’s Bloc, and Tanghalang Pilipino, Inc., the theater festival will select 12 new one-act plays. The playwrights of the selected plays must be willing to undergo a script development process with the creative team of the festival. The finalists will be formally announced at the end of the VLF Year 18, slated this June. For inquiries, call 8832-1125 local 1600 or email [email protected]