The Final Eight Counts

Ronelson Yadao knows every moment counts. Counting, after all, is one of the most fundamental things in ballet that every dancer should master.

It comes as second nature to Ronelson, the artistic director of Alice Reyes Dance Philippines (ARDP), the company that shares the name of its National Artist founder. So while his dancers were doing last minute stretches, he could not help but count as he pulled his arms to the side while doing his own set of preparations.

How many times did I teach them choreography? he thought to himself. How many hours did it take for them to master one act? How many days, weeks, months did it take for him and Alice to produce this show? How long has it been since the pandemic started? How many conversations did he have with his family, Alice, and himself to make a decision and establish ARDP?

Ronelson has spent most of his adult life keeping count, but amid all these questions, he admits to losing track. It has been a rough three years as the pandemic devastated the country's arts and culture scene that, to begin with, had perpetual problems generating the support it needed. And then there was the bigger question for Ronelson, now 32 years old, keeping count of the one question every dancer has to deal with: how many performances does he have left?

“That’s the worry of dancers. Because dance is physical, with age and mileage of the body, it starts getting difficult at age 30,” he says.

This might be it, he thinks to himself. He wasn't sure either way.

That Ronelson thinks about his dancing career in terms akin to mortality should not come as any surprise.

“Dancing saved my life,” Ronelson says, matter of factly.

He has been dancing since the early 2000s, when his mother made him and his older brother Richardson join a dance program launched by the City of Manila.

At first, Ronelson was just following his brother's dance steps as they tried to spin and twirl their way out of poverty. Under the tutelage of local dance greats such as Luther Perez, Eddie Alejar, and Tony Fabella, they soon found themselves at the prestigious Philippine High School for the Arts, which offered scholarships to talented youngsters.

By his junior year, Ronelson had been invited by Bam Damian to join Ballet Philippines as an apprentice. It wasn't long before he realized he wasn't just doing it for an escape; he had fallen madly in love with dance.

While studying at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, he began working as an apprentice dancer, earning a paltry P2,000 a month. “My focus at that time was to just dance and dance. I didn’t even realize I didn’t have enough money,” Ronelson says.

Dance would also make Ronelson realize that there was a bigger world to explore.

From friends and colleagues, he would hear of their experiences working in foreign shores: dance companies, cruise ships, even Disneyland!

The pull got so strong that in 2010, at just 20 years old, Ronelson left the Philippines to join a modern dance group in Taiwan.

“When I got there, I just danced and danced. I absorbed everything I could absorb,” he says.

What soon became apparent to Ronelson was just how much better dancers, and cultural workers, were treated abroad. It took him leaving the country for Ronelson to realize just how lacking in support Filipino dancers were. In Taiwan, the government fully supported the arts, and provided for the needs of all of their dancers.

“You won’t have to worry about anything. You’ll really just dance. You won’t be hungry. You won’t even have to worry about your health insurance,” he says.

But the experience only strengthened Ronelsons' resolve to come back home, to pursue his art back in the Philippines.

After four years in Taiwan, he would come home in 2014 to join Ballet Philippines, first as a soloist, then eventually as a principal dancer.

He would rise to become a co-associate director under the mentorship of Alice Reyes, the National Artist who has been credited with developing a distinctly Filipino modern dance idiom. Her major works, which include Amada (1969), At a Maranaw Gathering (1970), Itim-Asu (1971), Tales of the Manuvu (1977), Rama Hari (1980), and Bayanihan Remembered (1987), have helped create a contemporary dance language that is still uniquely rooted in the Philippine experience.

In many ways, Ronelson has reached the peak of his profession, and he has all the scars to show for it. He suffers from asthma, and he has cysts in both his knee and his ankle. At his age, his agility and flexibility are no match for his 20-year-old self.

But if he were ever in need of inspiration to push through, all he has to do is look around his own rehearsal space.

Steffi Santiago is only 22, but she knows one wrong landing could mean the end of her dance career. That reality is even more stark for her because of her scoliosis.

“I noticed I was crooked and thought it was normal until I saw other people’s spines that are straight,” she says. It turns out that her spine measured at an angle of 52 degrees.

Her doctor has recommended surgery, but that would mean fusing bones to fix her spine — the loss of even more flexibility would likely mean the end of her career as a dancer.

These days, Steffi does what she could to cope. Aside from the grueling dance classes, she has taken to pilates to improve her placement and flexibility, and she does extra work in the gym to build up her muscles. She also does yoga and different kinds of physical therapy.

“Dancing, even in class, I try to find what works for me,” she says. “It’s a battle because I feel like an outsider. I feel very different because I have to apply things differently. I have to find what works me and sometimes it’s frustrating.”

Despite the frustrations, Steffi doesn't want the music to end anytime soon.

“As long as God allows me to dance, as long as the world allows me to dance, as long as my body allows me to dance, I would want to dance forever,” Steffi says.

Katrene San Miguel has been dancing since she was five, when her mom enrolled her in an intensive dance class. She pursued it all the way through college, as a scholar at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, when she started working professionally as part of a dance company.

But her world changed in 2018, when she suddenly dropped a lot of weight and had difficulty breathing. It wasn't just her body that was affected; she suddenly found herself unable to memorize the combinations that had come so naturally to her.

She found herself on the side, crying, an unusual spot for Katrene who would usually keep fighting. Then finally someone told her to have her thyroid checked.

After a bit of googling, she found a butterfly-shaped lump on her throat before the doctors finally diagnosed her with thyrotoxicosis. That clarity gave Katrene a renewed resolved to keep battling: first by taking all her meds, then eventually by changing her whole lifestyle.

These days, Katrene says she's back to her old self, except for the occasional fatigue. Even Alice Reyes, the National Artist, could not help but be impressed.

“She’s one of the best Filipino dancers that I think the Philippines has produced. I don’t think of her hyperthyroidism. When Katrene dances, you won’t know that she has that physical consideration. You don’t. That's artistry, that's professionalism,” Alice says.

Looking back at how she was able to battle through her condition, Katrene has a firm answer: “Dance is my calling.”

At ARDP, the dancers undergo different programs to strengthen their bodies, including high-intensity interval training (HIIT) designed to help the dancers strengthen their legs, upper bodies, and targeted muscle groups.

It helps that the company has an in-house expert: Sarah Alejandro is a medical doctor.

She had trained under Agnes Locsin, another National Artist, and even scored a scholarship to the Philippine High School for the Arts.

She decided to pursue medicine after college, but the call of the music was too strong to ignore.

“When I was younger, I would even cry. I'd say, 'Lord, why would you give me these feet, this body if I weren't meant to dance?” she remembers.

Finally, after passing the board exams, she decided to pursue her career in dance. That was 10 years ago.

Now 34, Sarah is one of the oldest members in the group. She knows better than anyone that there is an age limit in her chosen field, but she isn't ready to say it's going to come anytime soon.

Perhaps one day, she'll even go back to the profession she left behind. But dance will always be part of her. “If ever I go back to being a practicing doctor, it will be in a field that will help dancers. It’s either rehab med or somewhere closest to dance medicine,” she says.

Alice Reyes left Ballet Philippines, the company she had founded, under controversial circumstances in 2020 — just before the start of the pandemic. Ronelson Yadao, who had looked to Alice as a mentor, would follow suit.

But when COVID-19 struck, numerous dancers lost their spots at various companies. While the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) gave some cash assistance to displaced artists, Alice and Ronelson saw the need for something beyond just gainful employment.

“The time period for dancers is very short,” Alice says. “When that moment is gone, it’s hard to get back.”

So she decided to seize the moment by working with Ronelson to set up the Alice Reyes Dance Philippines. Like partners in a pas de deux, they were able to take all the right steps in the midst of the tightest lockdown to incorporate the new company by June 2020.

Meanwhile, the training continued, virtually at first. Funding, already hard to come by for established dance troupes during good times, was a struggle to put together. Alice even had to take in some dancers at her home, just because she had the space.

Slowly, things began to open up. More patrons came on board, while the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) launched several programs that gave ARDP dancers jobs and project opportunities.

All that allowed the troupe to finally come back and do what they do best: dance together.

When the restrictions eased, the troupe began rehearsing at the main lobby of the CCP, before being part of the return of live performances at the venue in December 2021.

Last September, the group bannered “Pulso Pilipinas” shows featuring the work of Alice Reyes and Agnes Locsin, both National Artists, and the “Premiere and Encores” show last November 5.

ARDP will be part of the last set of performances at the CCP before it goes on a renovation that would not be completed until 2025. Their performance titled “Puso ng Pasko,” featuring choreography and direction by Ronelson Yadao, will be part of The CCP Dance Series on December 2 to 4, 2022.

The company is in a better place now than when this dance began in the middle of the pandemic, but everyone knows much more work needs to be done.

“Funding is always going to be an element of work. You always need patrons of the art, you always need sponsorships. We could do wonders with government help,” says Alice, who celebrated her 80th birthday last month.

With the CCP set to close for renovations, Ronelson thinks it could be an opportunity for the troupe to introduce themselves to local government units with whom they could create new programs.

One thing he doesn't worry as much about are his dancers, who have gone through the worst of the pandemic and have emerged as hungry as ever to perform.

“These dancers, they’re really strong. They persevere no matter what,” Ronelson says. “They endure and we are a group of that no matter what happens, even if there is a pandemic, even if the CCP closed down, we will still perform.”

Ronelson doesn't know what exactly drives that burning passion — “Maybe because we're masochists,” he quips — but he knows it is going to continue to drive them.