In Step With Philippine Independence : Heritage: Performance of a national dance is the centerpiece of a celebration of the nation’s history.

Rosalyn Tumbocon watched transfixed Saturday as the young dancers on stage, dressed in traditional Filipino costumes, balanced glasses holding lighted candles on their heads and the backs of their hands.

They swayed to the rhythm of Filipino folk music, delicately rotating their arms while trying to keep the glasses from falling.

Then the music changed. Dancers carrying bamboo poles came onstage. Two squatted on the floor, clashing the poles together as two other dancers quickly stepped in and out between the poles, slowly at first, then steadily faster.

Tumbocon and about 300 other people applauded wildly as the beat increased and the dancers practically leaped in and out of the moving poles. Their performance was part of a celebration of Philippine Independence Day by the Filipino-American Assn. of Orange County at the community hall of St. Bonaventure Church.

“It was amazing,” said Tumbocon, 14, an eighth-grader at Ethel Dwyer Middle School. “The rhythm was incredible.”

Tinikling is the Philippine national dance. It is difficult to master and performers have to be nimble to avoid getting caught in between the clashing bamboo poles.

The dance, part of a cultural presentation by Sarindiwa Inc. of Monterrey Park, was the centerpiece of Saturday’s celebration. The event, which started with a Catholic Mass, also coincided with the fourth annual celebration of the Orange County Federation of Filipino Rosary Groups, a religious organization of more than 1,000 Filipino-Americans in Orange County.

“This is for our kids,” said association president Ernie Delfin. “It’s a reminder to them of our religious and cultural heritage.”

The event commemorates the declaration of independence from Spain by Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo in Kawit, Cavite on June 12, 1898. It was a short-lived independence, however, because the Philippines became a U.S. colony after American troops suppressed Aquinaldo, who was fighting to keep his country free.

The United States eventually granted the Philippines independence on July 4, 1946. For a while, Filipinos celebrated July 4 as Independence Day, but in the early 1960s, during the term of Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal, the celebration was changed to June 12.