Countywide : Filipino Americans Celebrate Culture

Through songs and dances, Filipino Americans from Orange County and Southern California showcased their heritage Thursday during a four-hour cultural play at the Irvine Barclay Theatre.

“No Place Like Home,” a skit about a young Filipina raised in the United States finding her roots, was presented by the Kababayan Club, a UCI organization.

Borrowing the story line from the Wizard of Oz, the girl embarked on a fantasy journey back to the Philippines, following a brown dirt road to seek her identity.

In the end, she got the answer as the Filipino way of life unfolded before her through the food, music, customs and such dances as “tinikling,”and “singkil,” in which dancers nimbly stepped in and out of clashing bamboo poles.

“We had fun with it,” said Brian de Leon, president of Kababayan Club, a 200-member organization of mostly Filipino American students at UCI. “But we tried to stick to the basic story line--pride in our culture, pride in being Filipinos.”

The cultural show is the club’s biggest event of the year, de Leon said. More than 100 members participate and tryouts begin as early as September. Practices take more than six months.

About 700 people attended the play, which has been performed for the past 15 years. There are about 30,000 Filipinos in Orange County.

“We’re no longer the invisible Asian minority in Orange County,” said de Leon, 21, a junior majoring in math, and elected club president last year. “We have to be proud of our culture.”

De Leon said that the club was founded in 1974 to popularize Filipino culture on and off campus. Students from other ethnic groups are accepted. This year, in part because of the efforts of the group, UCI offered a class on Filipino American studies, he said.

John Flowers of Garden Grove, who is married to a Filipina, said that many of the young people may have forgotten about their homeland, “but this was one way to remind them of their heritage.”

“It reminded me of home,” said Flower’s wife, Nonet. “It brought back the memories.”

Domingo Empalmado of Orange, whose son, Darryl, was one of the performers, said, “It’s nice that the kids are aware of their heritage.”

Video clips spoofing recent movies and poking light jabs at Filipino experiences in the United States were interspersed with the songs and dances.

In the skit, the girl called Dory was accompanied by a gigolo looking for a heart, a farm boy who wanted brains and a G-stringed tribal warrior who wanted to be brave.

The slapstick humor bothered Erwin Manlapaz, a UCLA student, who said that the message of cultural pride may have been trivialized.

“If you want to talk about pride and cultural awareness, you have to do it with a little more seriousness,” he said.

But Manlapaz said he was impressed with the folk dances. Spanish and Muslim influences were apparent in the flowing gowns and costumes of the dancers.

In the “singkil,” a Muslim princess in snowy clothes sitting on two bamboo poles was carried onstage by two men.

“I’ve never been exposed to something like this,” said Michael Masangkay, 20, of Los Angeles, who said that it was only in the past two years that he began to be interested in the Filipino culture. “I had always tried to be more American than Filipino.”