Tinikling
Therese B.
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Tinikling is one of the Philippine's traditional dances. I was inspired to compose the motions and the colors of the technical, three-quarter-time bamboo dancing because I wanted to share a beautiful piece from my culture that I had once rejected. Being born in the Philippines and immigrating during elementary school has formidably impacted my cultural identity. It took years of educating myself about the effects of colonialism on my identity for me to start appreciating my culture. I indulged myself in artwork produced by Filipino and Filipino-American artists, and when I visited my hometown, I took the time to learn Tinikling. Although I spent countless hours drilling different steps, my bare feet dirty, sore, and pinched by the bamboo, listening to a "1-2 click.." repeatedly in the hot, humid Philippines air, I was in LOVE with this dance. I loved the challenge it gave me, the sound of the bamboo clicking, the colors, and the graceful forms of Filipino folk dance. My love for this dance and culture inspired me to gather my friends, teach them the primary steps of Tinikling, and compose this picture. I wanted to present three things through this composition: the motion blur to demonstrate the challenging mobility that this dance demands, the setting of the hill to achieve a background that amplified the vivid colors of the traditional baro't saya that my friends are wearing, and the stillness of the girl in the center to demonstrate one of the graceful folk dance forms.
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Creativity means to me expressing ideas, emotions, theories, struggles, and morality in ambiguous presentations. Creativity is reaching levels of intelligence that cannot be measured. It's "thinking outside the box". Creativity comes in a variety of forms that cannot be defined, and produces infinite possibilities.
