Unedited Original Contribution to the PBT Journal

From: RAOUL’S PBT FILES (Warning: Blog's real long)

PBT ANECDOTES Sept, 2006

A motley collection of memorable quotes and very short stories gathered while pretending to dance for the Philippine Ballet Theater company.

Origin of “PBT….ATTACK!!!”

It was near the end of PBT’s first season during Merry Widow and just after the company gathered in a circle for prayers before a performance. Jorge Laico, an ex-varsity soccer player in high school, jokingly stuck out his hand, palm down, in the middle of the group and said “Ok…for the Lady of Victory”. A few dancers like Kim Atienza, James Lopez, Jake Pacquing and Raoul Banzon then all piled hands with Jorge and together gave a “1…2…3…FIGHT!”… shout just like you see in team sports. The next performance day they did it again but this time Raoul thought “PBT….ATTACK!” would be more appropriate (as in attacking your role or ballet technique) and everybody delightfully joined in. This later became a standard pre-performance, team-building, tension-easing and distinctively PBT ritual ever since which has both amazed and amused visiting international guest artists as well as been adapted by other dance companies.

PBT Quote, Unquote

“When the curtain goes up….you go up with it!” Director Inday Manosa during her pep talk before one of the earlier shows (sabit ka duon).

“Do you want me to put YOU instead of him onstage and make you dance his roles?!?” Director Gener Caringal scolding Nonet, then a new company office secretary, a non-dancer, when, soloist Raoul Banzon got miffed after she mistakenly implemented a discontinued policy of deducting penalties from the dancers then spartan salaries.

“What in God’s name are you doing to my creation?!?” The late great Costume Designer Arturo Cruz, famed for his beautiful and danceable stage costumes, angrily raged when he caught apprentice dancer Iya de los Santos adjusting Raoul Banzon’s “Mir-i-nisa” costume to make it tighter as a favor to and at Raoul’s request while he hid out of sight.

“I’ll just speak in English because there are a lot of foreigners…” Soloist Shaz Barroso commencing his speech during the post-performance cast party dinner in Detroit’s Marriot Hotel hosted by the PhilAm Medical Association (PBT US TOUR ’93) where each dancer was requested to say a few words to a mostly white American audience. Actually the dancers were the foreigners so that everybody had a good laugh.

“That’s why my company hates me.” Guest Choreographer Robert Barnett, Director of Atlanta Ballet, saying it half in jest when the dancers gasped while he was teaching PBT company class and giving a difficult allegro (small quick jumps) excercise reflecting his Ballanchine roots.

“What’s that? MUD?” culture-shocked and awe-strucked Guest Lead Dancer Tom Shoemaker, Atlanta Ballet, when he was offered Dinuguan, a Filipino delicacy made of pig’s blood which has a blackish color and a gravy-like, thick liquid consistency during his first visit to the Philippines.

“You guys can blow them away.” Guest Lead Dancer George Prieto, Atlanta Ballet, telling the PBT male dancers his impression on who has the better dancers at the time (early '90s) after watching the company class of the other CCP resident ballet company.

“Aba Biba…Ang galing ng boys! Ang galing ng boys! Ang galing ng boys! (Hurray…the boys were great! The boys were great! The boys were great!) Director Julie Borromeo, when after a show in the Meralco Theater she happily went backstage, quickly opened the door and stuck her head in the Boys’ Dressing Room, excitedly complemented the boys for their performance, then just as quickly left and shut the door.

“Well, goodluck. I hope you find it.” Unknown American Ballet Theater gay male dancer at the ABT studios in New York (where PBT took class and rehearsed), after asking Raoul Banzon where in New Jersey and what theater the PBT was going to perform at in which Raoul could only give a stammering, vague reply after being confused with all the many venues during the US ’93 Tour.

“I want to buy a pica-pica?” Guest Ballet Master/Lead Dancer Rinat Gizatulin, Bolshoi Ballet, asking the clerk at the counter of a convenience store. Rinat was PBT’s first Russian Ballet Master and there was going to be a small potluck party for him. He asked one of the boys to help him buy dinner-type food who replied that he didn’t have to buy real food…just pica-pica (snack and finger food-types).

“Kawawa naman si Barbie (Poor, pitiful Barbie).” Overheard from an old lady in the audience during one of PBT’s outreach shows in an open air makeshift venue at a small town in Zambales. She was referring to ballerina Melanie Motus portraying Andres Bonifacio’s wife in the beating and rape scene of the Andres Bonifacio ballet, where some of the audience thought she looked like a Barbie Doll due to her white mestiza skin and brownish hair.

“Sinong umutot (Who the heck farted)!” blurted out by Butch Esperanza, quietly asking the other dancers, while they were performing “Thatness, Thereness” in Mexico City resulting in suppressed giggling onstage. This was when the dancers hand to contend with a series of hot and spicy Mexican food throughout the Mexico’96 Tour.

“Is everything about you naturally and properly attached?” Harold King, London City Ballet Artistic Director, making sure with alternate male lead Raoul Banzon during the dress tech of “La Sylphide”. Harold played the evil witch Matilde where in Act 2 he mercilessly picks up the weakened male lead "James" by the hair and was surprised to feel alternate lead Shaz Barroso’s entire scalp give way not knowing that he wore a wig.

“Jimbo’s chaines were smoking!” Dancer Jorge Laico teasingly describing apprentice James Lopez’s chaines during the premiere of “La Gitana”. James’ role was that of a middle-aged suitor and thought to put baby powder on his hair to make him appear much older not knowing that you're supposed to gel it down. The quick moving turns of the chaines made the dry powder billow out like his head was trailing smoke.

“For a while I was in a panic and didn’t know what to do. I was contemplating stuffing the dirt into my mouth…,” Sol Fernandez after a funny little pas de deux with Vie Lising which they choreographed and danced in a PBT outreach tour in Iloilo. They had a small potted flowering plant among the props which Sol accidentally dropped and smashed in his hurry to clear the stage for the next dance. He was worried he wouldn’t be able to clean up the garden soil that spilled on the stage before the curtain went up.

“My objective is to strive to make PBT the best ballet company in Asia.” The late, great Eric Cruz at the start of his second turn as Artistic Director of the company.

“What have you people been putting your feet through?!” Aling Mameng Valencia, a manghihilot (local chiropractor/masseuse/witchdoctor) aghast at the battered toes and toenails of several ballerinas who had their sprained ankles treated by her. More used to treating the relatively normal feet of sports athletes, the ghastly effects of wearing pointe shoes were quite new to her.

“The maid didn”t wake me up…or…the driver was late…or…I had bible class…” some of soloist Raoul Banzon’s favorite excuses when he’s late for class or rehearsals in an attempt to shock visiting international guest choreographers from France, England, Australia, Russia or the U.S. where domestic help isn’t commonly affordable or people not overly religious..

“Ako ang inyong titser (I am your teacher).” Ballet Master Rinat Gizatulin, Bolshoi Ballet, trying out his Filipino in class with the help of his newly-acquired “English-Filipino, Filipino-English” phrase book that his girlfriend sent him from the Netherlands.

“Taxi...gasp...Taxi....” Soloist Raoul Banzon, with hand outstretched, clowning around during rehearsals for “Romeo and Juliet”, acting like he's about to expire at the end of his death scene as Mercutio and reflecting the local tendency for rushing stabbing victims to the hospital in a taxi cab. Even Tom Pasic found it amusing.

“I hereby declare July 9…Philippine Ballet Theater Day in San Francisco” The honorable Mayor of San Francisco, USA, before the performance in that beautiful city during the US Tour’96.

“Ahh…that’s my student!” Guest Ballet Master Rinat Gizatulin, Bolshoi Ballet, boasting everytime one of the boys gets to nail a trick acrobatic jump that he taught in his mens class.

“Great! They treated me like a King!” the late and also great Tom Pasic, Choreographer, Atlanta Ballet, replying to Jorge Laico back at Atlanta when he was asked how he found the Philippines. Enjoying the high-end hospitality of Executive Director Mita Rufino’s home in Forbes Park, Tom was chauffeur-driven to and from the studio and was served breakfast in bed on a silver tray by a maid among the many other comforts he enjoyed and was practically adored by the company.

"I thought there would be bullets whizzing past me when I get here." American guest artist Tom Shoemaker amusingly telling the boys what he initially expected to encounter upon arriving in the Philippines for the first time. This was due to the negative reports from stateside friends and media concerning the past attempted military coups in the late '80s. The boys laughed when he said some friends even advised him not to go and that it was risky.

"You see that guy Bobong...he's an NPA (New People's Army - local communist insurgents)!" Jorge Laico trying to shock and fool American guest artist Tom Shoemaker after the latter remarked that western media gave a mistaken negative impression on the Philippine peace and order situation. Bobong Fortun was among the more indigenous filipino-looking of the boys.

"Orlan! Joel! Magagaling na ba kayo!?! (Are you guys experts already!?!)" Artistic Director Gener Caringal shouting from the auditorium for two of the newer company members when he noticed they weren't present on stage with everybody else for the pre-run through warm up class. It was an outreach in Cebu and the two boys were starting to eat the snacks provided backstage after resolutely deciding among themselves that it would be okay to skip class and just do their own warm up later. Startled, they jumped to it, dropped the food and scurried onstage two seconds after Gener angrily yelled for them.

"Mrs. Rufino has many more cars than she has drivers." Guest Choreographer John Paul Comelan grudgingly explaining, in a french accent, to dancer Raoul Banzon why he has to hitch a ride with him from his billet at the wealthy, upscale Rufino house to the studio.

"I make sure I stay several paces away from him". Soloist Maritoni Rufino talking about when she has to accompany her house guest, Russian Balletmaster Rinat Gizatulin, to the mall. She didn't want to be mistaken for his prostitute by passers by. In Manila's commercial areas, you sometimes see big, burly, balding, middle-aged caucasian men walking around with a youngish, tiny, dark and not at all pretty lady of the night clinging possessively to his arm.

PBT Short Shorties

The start of Act 2 of PBT’s Coppelia is the Dr. Coppelius’ workshop scene where dancers portray toys or dolls that are slumped as if inanimate objects until Dr. Coppelius winds each of them up and they start dancing their solo toy dance in turn before winding down back to a slumped position. They hold this position for a long time while other things are going on in this scene. Apprentice Rhadie Kho, who played the astronomer toy, seemed to find this gap too long, fell asleep and eventually fell off his seat during a couple of performances.

Director Eddie Elejar was restaging one of his ballets when the bumbling dancers eventually put him in a rare bad mood. The rehearsal would start and stop when at each mistake he would angrily turn around to the tape deck and shut off the music. Finally, in one moment of impatience and disgust, he turns around in a rage and with sheer passion shuts off…..the electric fan (which stood next to the tape deck) by mistake.

Katrina Santos was performing in a group dance and mistakenly struck a pose upstage with her back to the audience waiting for her next cue instead of exiting. Since there were other dances going on the audience didn’t notice anything wrong but her co-dancers in the wings did. They tried to catch her attention and quietly tell her to exit. When she finally looked and saw the dancers frantically signalling to her in the wings she couldn’t really hear them due to the music and misunderstood their gesturing and whispers for complements. She then put on a sly, understanding look, smiled and a gave them a concealed nod and thumbs up. Like thanks...Everything A-OK. She stayed put.

During PBT’s US Tour’93, the company was performing in a theater in New Jersey when it started to rain hard outside. It turned out that the roof had a leak at a portion of the stage and there were no extra American stagehands to address this problem because of some union thing. So every time the curtain went down in between dance numbers you would see a ballerina in a beautiful white tutu or a datu in Moslem-inspired costume or a guy in Don Quixote black with a humble mop dabbing out the wet spot on the stage.

Just to show how small-town Cebu City was back then, during a performance there, the big Russian, “Rinat Gizatulin”, slipped and fell onstage with a loud crashing thud while doing his solo as “Solor”. He quickly recovered and finished his dance and the show went on without any more mishaps. The next day, however, it was the talk-of-the-town especially at the marketplace since it was a weekend.

Two of the PBT’s Fil-Am hosts and their families during the US Tour’93 were so enthused by the company’s performance and camaraderie in Corpus Christi, Texas, that days later they got in their cars and drove several hours to Houston, Texas to again catch the show on the tour’s next leg.

The last leg of PBT’s US Tour’93 was a rest and recreation stop at Anaheim, L.A. where the company stayed in two small hotel suites…one for girls and one for boys. At about past 2:00AM one of the boys couldn’t sleep so he decided to get up and check out if his girlfriend was up in the other room. This awakened a friend of Director Gener Caringal who was also staying in the room and he frantically woke Gener up thinking the boy was sneaking out to be a TNT ( the Filipino term for an illegal alien in the U.S.). Gener, seeing it was just one of his trusty soloists, told his friend not to worry.

Two leading PBT soloists were sent by the company to dance a pas de deux in the taping for a noontime variety show on T.V.. It was to feature different types of dances so there were also dancers for jazz, folk, hip hop, modern and others aside from ballet. But instead of hanging around waiting for their cues like they usually do the other dancers gathered and watched in admiration and awe as the professional classical ballet couple geared up, stretched and kept warmed up. When the two broke out some rosin and started crushing these underfoot (to give your shoes grip on the floor) the other dancers, thoroughly impressed, imitated them and also stepped onto the small pile of rosin…applying it under their own shoes even if they never needed it before. Soon even the T.V. show’s director, an ex-dancer, also applied some rosin just because everyone else was doing it.

After the fresh, enthusiastic, respectful and eager to learn attitude of the dancers which they experienced during their stints with PBT, Bobby Barnett and Tom Pasic, for a time would cite these traits whenever the Atlanta Ballet dancers started to complain or slack off for any reason like "in PBT it was like this" or "unlike you, PBT dancers behaved like that" (to the American dancers chagrin).

Knowing that most visitors to Mexico City are not acclimatized to the thin air at 10,000 ft. altitude the stage had small oxygen tanks on the wings for the PBT dancers just in case. It turned out that they weren't needed after all.

Despite a very small Filipino community in Mexico (1996) all the venues where PBT performed were always full, most especially in Acapulco, where the theater was just as big as the Folk Arts Theater and was almost jampacked mainly due to the great work done by friends and the good people of the Philippine Embassy in Mexico City.

An old Russian lady from Kirov was imported by PBT to be Ballet Mistress. This was at a time when the Soviet Union had just recently dissolved and cell phones were just coming out in the Philippines. Billeted at Mrs. Mita Rufino’s house, she once borrowed her host’s wireless phone, put it in her bag and brought it with her to the studio thinking it was a cell phone. She also only stayed a month not able to stand the tropical heat.

On outreach shows you sometimes have local peeping toms near the girls dressing area. The girls always called on Raoul Banzon who manly confronts these low lifes and gets to shoo them off despite being dressed in a prince costume of white tights and glittery classic top plus make up.

The story goes that after the Edsa Revolution the different dance companies had a meeting with the exclusive Cultural Center of the Philippines where they agreed to form a single company and PBT was born and became the other resident ballet company. But, when the other PBT artistic council members had already left, Tita Inday Manosa stayed pat until she was able to wrangle a small monthly grant for the new company which help start it off.

After the PBT show in Tokyo, Japan, where one of the big numbers was Gener Caringal’s “Andres Bonifacio” ballet, Gener wanted to show his appreciation to the theater crew by giving them the customary souvenirs but he didn’t bring any. Thinking fast, he dug into his pockets and gave each of them the big two peso Philippine coins that had Andres Bonifacio’s likeness on one side of the coin which the Japanese crew appreciated.

Many instances during the U.S. and Mexican tours people at hotel lobbies and cast parties, friends and strangers alike, would approach the PBT dancers to see, feel and complement the material and embroidery of their formal barong attire, many asking where they could order one.

One of PBT’s most loyal and dedicated fans during it’s early years was a retired and very (dirty?) old man named Mr. Zialcita. He was always at the studio lounge watching rehearsals and attended all performances (making sure to congratulate the ballerinas). He supported PBT every day until he passed away.

In a performance at the Polo Club, Russian guest Rinat Gizatulin and PBT's Maritoni Rufino were about to dance the "bedroom pas de deux" from "Carmen". Typically, Rinat had a strong, stinky, sticky body odor that he was not aware of which the other dancers politely tolerated. But since he was to dance this scene bare-chested his desperate partner asked one of the boys to do something about his dizzying body odor. The guy, a good friend to Rinat, pulled out a bottle of Mennen's after shave cologne but couldn't come up with a polite way of asking Rinat to use it without possibly offending him. Finally, he just splashed some on his palm and dabbed it on Rinat's chest. Surprised, Rinat smelled what it was then, to everyones relief, happily took the bottle and gamely splashed the refreshing cologne all over his body. It worked.

At the dress tech of Elejar's "Calle Potenciano" ballet, the show finale ends with Soloist Butch Esperanza getting stabbed by a sword and drops to the floor dying then the curtain falls. The curtain then goes up and the performers bow. When it was Butch’s turn to bow he stays in character by entering from the wings bent over, hands on his sword wounded gut, slowly dragging his feet to the middle of the stage and bowing as if cringing in pain to everyones amusement.

PBT’s inaugural performance in 1987 almost turned into a fiasco when a nervous stage crew raised the curtains and played the music too early. The performers for the first dance were caught by surprise onstage doing stretches, putting on pointe shoes and other last minute stuff. To their credit the dancers quietly ad libbed and adjusted to their positions on time with the music and saved the moment by performing well. By thinking on their feet this was a sample glimpse of the PBT golden years to come.