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By Rome Jorge, Lifestyle Editor
The place just isn’t big enough anymore. And
that’s both a good thing and a bad thing for the Cultural Center
of the Philippines. Never before have so many youths filled all the
cavernous spaces of CCP. The recent Cinemalaya Independent Filipino
Film Festival illustrated both the vibrancy and the challenges that
face the 39-year old institution. Many of the venues were jam packed
and sold out. The youth are hungry for the arts again. These were
not mere students bussed in for school requirements clutching
pre-sold tickets and trudging along obligatorily in school uniform.
These were bright-eyed adolescents
enthusiastically inquiring which movie was the best, filing the
halls with genuine excitement. Many had come to see their peers who
now are filmmakers, cast and crew themselves. The CCP experience has
become personal.
Even more heartening is the participation of the
independent artists themselves. These Young Turks are the future of
Philippine culture, without which the CCP—despite the genius of
its architect, the late National Artist Leandro Locsin—is but a
gargantuan carbuncle of concrete.
Other annual indie art events fostered by CCP
duplicate this success. The Wi-Fi Body Independent Contemporary
Dance Festival where the best dance choreographers perform,
collaborate and discuss their art and the Virgin Labfest Theater
Festival where promising playwrights premiere their works draw the
same young bohemian crowd as the Cinemalaya.
Just as encouraging is the CCP’s ongoing
counter programming of international pop entertainment and
insightful Filipino artistry. Concurrently performing at the CCP are
Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella by Broadway Asia
Entertainment starring Tony Award-winning Lea Salonga and Tony-Award
winning playwright David Henry Hwang’s The Golden Child by
Tanghalang Pilipino directed by Obie Award Hall of Famer Loy Arcenas.
Both performances have drawn the healthy patronage of young people.
Indie films and orchestra, edgy contemporary
dance and neo-classical ballet: it’s hard to believe that it’s
all happening at the CCP.
The hulking edifice was once just a grim
reminder of the elitist pretentions of the kleptomaniacal Marcos
dictatorship of the 1970s. At its worst, the CCP attracts only a
smattering of elderly matrons, leaving its world-class performers to
face a lonesome expanse of empty red seats. But now, nothing less
than a sea change has been wrought. A tempest has been unleashed.
And at the helm is no less than Nestor Jardin, president of CCP.
Jardin confesses a concerted effort to break
elitist stereotypes: “It’s been a hard climb but I think we’re
getting the audience shift. I formed what we call a media committee,
with Emily Abrera as chairperson [also current chairperson of the
CCP’s Board of Trustees] to solve the elitist image.”
But even as aspirations soar, the realities that
face the CCP are ever more daunting and bleak. While roof leaks, air
conditioning outages and all the troubles of four-decade old
structures bedevil the institution, the CCP gallantly maintains its
dazzling façade—an effort nothing short of Promethean.
As the CCP attracts today’s youths with
independent dance, theater and cinema, it promises to broaden their
horizons with even more classical, folk and indigenous arts. Jardin
reveals that CCP is poised to include among its roster of resident
art groups those representing opera and folk orchestra.
Soon, complementing its roster of highly
esteemed orchestra, choir, theater and dance groups will be the
Philippine Opera Company and possibly an ethnomusic group from
Philippine Women’s University or the University of the
Philippines.
Jardin confides, “We don’t really have funds
to do full length opera. So we want to do what’s here, and to
introduce the audience this art form. So we partner with
institutions like the Phil Opera Company. If given a grant next
year, under the leadership of Nedy [Zenaida] Tantoco, we’ll
produce two operas. Opera is very much in the pipeline and the
ultimate goal is to have an opera company. The only thing that’s
missing is that and traditional Philippine music orchestra or
ensemble. PWU has a strong group. UP has also.”
In a time of global economic crisis, corporate
and government downsizing and “dumbsizing,” the CCP dares dream
of growth. To do otherwise would be to ensure its irrelevance and
decay and to leave youths at the mercy of globalized
commercialization and mallrat culture.
Jardin explains: “Two years ago, the
government mandated all government departments and agencies to
streamline the bureaucracy. We were directed to study our
organizational structure in line with the directives, we were doing
a series of consultations and we realize that there are several
factors that will affect the future of the CCP that we should
already include in the rationalization plan. The ultimate goal of
the rationalization plan is to fix the number of employees and to
cut down excess.”
He elucidates his hopes for the Cultural Center:
“That directive bit into our plan, because the CCP Complex
development plan have in it the construction of several additional
structures for the CCP which include a film theater, a library and
archive building, film complex, a museum for traditional Filipino
art and a contemporary art museum. That would necessitate expansion
cause you’ll build these structures, you’ll have to man these
structures.”
Jardin hopes his plans for the CCP can weather
the economic downturn just as the CCP itself has withstood tremors
and typhoons: “When we did the rationalization plan it was with
the view that in the future we would be expanding. We proposed a
structure that would expand a bit, over a period of five, 10, 15
years, now what we’re trying to do is, while the economic crisis
is still on, we’re holding off the restructuring, until the
country weathered the crisis, hopefully by next year. By next year
we will collapse some departments and form new ones.”
To both whet and satisfy the hunger for cultural
sustenance with no means of its own to spare, Jardin dares walk a
tightrope with plans of conscientious commercialization—allowing
the establishment of restaurants and shops to fund new venues for
the arts.
Jardin confesses, “The fact is that the CCP
doesn’t have money to construct these facilities. So the plan is
to do private sector partnership. Our plan is to blend commerce and
the arts whereby they can mutually benefit from each other and
coexist so that our audiences will patronize commercial
establishments and vice versa.”
As its president, Jardin personifies the CCP of
today. He embodies the institution with his stature—both
physically and mentally. With the poise of the danseur he once was
for the Ballet Philippines, the 46-year old carries a suit or a
barong tagalog like few men can, even as he deals with problems
mundane and gargantuan. Yet the dapper CCP president keeps his
finger on the pulse of the underground.
He can be seen cutting ribbons for art galleries
at such bohemian enclaves as Cubao X or kicking back and watching
films at its indie film bar Mogwai. He also travels across the
Philippines constantly, keeping tabs as on promising regional art
groups, handpicking the best of them to receive support from and
perform at the CCP.
He elaborates how the CCP supports such regional
efforts: “There are several ways we do. For existing groups, we
tour them. Once they’ve achieved a higher level, we offer them
organizational development workshop so that they can continue
existing as a group, like an arts management course, we teach them
marketing, how to write press releases and how to do their income
statements.”
Arts management training is also offered to
individuals such as independent filmmakers and choreographers.
“I was in Paris last July and I attended a
seminar on film marketing distribution, and exhibition and how to
get foreign funding, how to link up with other groups, how to budget
and how to project income. So this is what were going to do for next
year’s [Cinemalaya] batch, right after we choose the 10 finalists:
I want to sit down with them in a workshop seminar type, one or two
days, to have people teach these filmmakers. My dream is each one of
them would form their own company, or bond together like Arkeo and
UFO, start a small company that will produce and market their films
and get foreign funds. If we have these small enterprises then the
indie film industry will thrive and become viable.”
Jardin exemplifies the CCP’s strength in arts
management. He gives his staff all the credit: “We have the best
people here at the CCP. I think we have the best art managers in the
country.”
But it is his depreciative recounting of his
life that best highlights the value of arts management: “When I
was dancing I realized that I wasn’t really an excellent
dancer—I wasn’t in the caliber of Nonoy Froilan or Manny Molina
who were my contemporaries. I did solo roles in modern dance. But I
realized because of my height and my build that I wouldn’t do a
prince role in a full-length ballet. The career span of a dancer,
especially a male dancer, is short. At that time [Ballet Philippines
founder] Alice [Reyes] assigned me to be the company manager and I
quite enjoyed the job. That started it. And then Jaime Ongpin, who
was a Board member of Ballet Philippines, funded and gave me a
scholarship to AIM [Asian Institute of Management] for its
management program. I took it and I liked the subjects—marketing,
statistics, finance—and then after I finished that they made me
Administrator of Ballet Philippines.”
If a man’s work speaks for him, then
Jardin’s bountiful harvest of well-attended cultural events
testifies to his efficient, creative and inspiring management.
Jardin’s rise from humble public school
education to the most esteemed artistic institutions also
exemplifies the CCP’s goal of cultural outreach.
He recalls how dancing came to him naturally:
“When I was in grade one, around 6 yrs old, I don’t know why but
my teachers would always put me in front during field
demonstrations. I was made to lead most of the folk dance
presentation, then at the Phil Science High School, I became a
member of a folkdance troupe. I was doing all the lead roles.
Naturally when I went to UP I was drawn to the UP Filipiniana Dance
Company. I became lead dancer and was elected president.”
It was at UP in the summer 1973 while taking up
BS Zoology that Jardin and friends Ruthgard Yap and Loy Arcenas
enrolled at the CCP on a whim for a modern dance class by Pauline
Coner from New York. It was there Reyes saw his potential and
offered him a scholarship at the CCP dance school.
For CCP’s 40th anniversary, Jardin reveals
efforts to foster synergy among various independent arts movements.
“We’ve designated July as the independent
series month, so all of these festivals happen in July. Next year
there will be big events because it’s our 40th anniversary. And
one of them is holding the Wi-Fi and the Virgin Labfest
simultaneously for 10 days from July 1 to 10. Because we observed
that the audiences for these are the same—young, bohemian, similar
also to the audience of Cinemalaya. We can’t hold the three
together because Cinemalaya by itself already can take care of the
house. So to save on marketing we bring them together, and it’s my
hope also that dance artists can collaborate with theater
artists.”
Jardin’s ambitions for the CCP are selfless.
They go well beyond his tenure. President since 2001, his tenure is
set to expire next year. Hopefully, the administration will see the
wisdom in his continuity. Regardless, the man dares dream 5 to 20
years into the future, when people quite naturally go to the
Cultural Center of the Philippines like a day at the mall or in the
park, when art and culture is part of daily life.
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