Dancing as Prayer

In the backyard of Tess Domingo’s home in Walnut, men and women gathered this week to dance the turumba. Though it rolls off the tongue like a rumba, the traditional Filipino dance feels less like a party and more like a prayer.

On a recent rehearsal night, the turumba dancers held statues of the Virgin Mary with both hands and lifted them up to the heavens, waving them from side to side. As their feet did a two-step, they brought the statues downward in a sweeping motion and clutched them to their hearts.

“It’s a prayer dance, a healing dance,” explained Babes Fortich, choreographer and liturgical consultant for the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese. “That’s why they touch their bodies with the statue. They’re praying to Mary to be cured.”

Today, members of the Filipino community will dance the turumba during the annual celebration of the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The actual holy day is Tuesday, commemorating the day in 1531 when, believers say, a dark-skinned Virgin Mary appeared to an Indian named Juan Diego on the Mexican hill of Tepeyac and left her image on his cloak.

For Mexicans, the Virgin of Guadalupe serves as a powerful icon of national identity and contemporary faith. Her image has become so embedded in the fabric of Los Angeles that it appears on murals, storefronts and even in tattoos as protection.

In recent years, veneration of Guadalupe has evolved from its Mexican origins to become a multicultural phenomenon. This year marks the first time that members of the Filipino community will perform a ritualistic dance from their native country as part of the celebration.

Ranking as the second-largest Catholic ethnic group after Latinos, Filipinos hope to offer something from their own culture to Guadalupe.

Thousands are expected to walk down Cesar Chavez Avenue this morning in a procession filled with floats and Aztec dancers to the East Los Angeles College stadium in Monterey Park. At 1 p.m., Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, will celebrate a Mass at the stadium.

“The tendency is to think that Our Lady of Guadalupe is only for Mexicans,” said Irma Isip, director of the Asian Pacific and ethnic groups ministry for the archdiocese. “For Filipinos in particular, Guadalupe has a special relationship in the context of history. Many young Filipinos don’t even know that history. So, doing this dance is bridging the history of our people with where we are today.”

Guadalupe’s place in Filipino history dates to colonization. When Spanish explorers claimed the Philippines and converted the population to Catholicism, the region came under the jurisdiction of the archdiocese of Mexico. Because Guadalupe was the patron of Mexico, she became patron of the Philippines under Mexican authority.

In 1898, when the United States gained control of the Philippines, the patron was changed from dark-skinned Guadalupe to the more traditional image of the Immaculate Conception.

Earlier this year, when the Los Angeles Archdiocese was planning the program for this year’s feast of Guadalupe, members of the Filipino Rosary Group were asked what they would like to contribute.

Dance was decided on because it forms such an integral part of Filipino religious culture. Isip said that of the hundreds of Filipino dances performed to honor the Virgin Mary, the turumba seemed the most appropriate.

But what is turumba? No one really knows, and the exact meaning of the word has been lost.

It is believed that the turumba originated in pagan times and was celebrated in the town of Pakil. According to legend, in the 1700s a fisherman found a framed oil painting of the Virgin depicted as Our Lady of Sorrows floating in Laguna Lake. For having survived storms and calamities, the image was said to possess miraculous healing powers, and a cult devoted to the Virgin Mary formed in Pakil.

Every spring during Holy Week, the sick traveled in a procession to Pakil to take part in the turumba dance for the Virgin.

If they danced, they believed, they would be cured of their pain and suffering. So, with all their strength, the sick plodded to Pakil. During the procession, they sang and shouted: “Turumba! Turumba! Worshipful Mary!”

Today in Pakil, the turumba festival is no longer a parade of the sick, but traces of that association remain. During the turumba, some dancers hobble like sick people. Some have said that turumba may have originated from turo, which means to point, and umbay, which refers to the chant by invalids.

As the dancers rehearsed in Walnut, their hand and foot movements recalled the Filipinos’ shaman past. Some dancers had forgotten to bring statues of Mary, so they used the wooden sheep and camels from Tess Domingo’s Nativity scene. Yolanda Gonzalez, a Mexican American Catholic who had come to watch, said she was initially surprised to learn that Filipinos would perform at the Guadalupe celebration.

“Can you believe this? Filipinos dancing at a Mexican celebration. I think it’s great. It makes sense because they can relate to the Hispanic community in language and culture,” Gonzalez said. “It’s not until we start talking that we realize how much we have in common.”

Domingo, a member of the dance group that hosted the turumba rehearsal in her home, said members want to honor the Virgin of Guadalupe “as Filipinos, and this is our way of expressing that. This is something I can offer her. They say if you pray to her, it helps you.”

Like many of the other Filipinos in the group, Fe Musgrave had never heard of the turumba until a few months ago when the idea surfaced. But after learning the dance, she has come to appreciate its significance to her faith.

“I can’t wait to be up there on the stage doing the steps because I know it’s going to be more than just a dance. It’s going to be a prayer, a prayer from us to Our Lady,” she said.