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The IPAG Story continues

Riding the crests of the pandemic at full speed

As a major performing company, IPAG has continued representing the Philippines in international festivals including the Diwali in Virginia, the Philippine Society of Public Administrators, Asia Futures 2050, among others.

Its presence in numerous productions and webinars, including its inclusion in a major publication of the 200-volume World Ramayana Encyclopedia, its version well-acclaimed in India, evidences IPAG’s active engagements.

Even in temporary quarantine, IPAG has received awards, the most recent being the CCP Gador and the Gawad CCP, the highest distinction for a performing company.The 2nd phase of its tranSCRIPT Dramaturgy, Playwriting, and Dance Workshops will be capped by recitals on Saturday, Dec. 12 (Dance), and Wed. and Thu, 16 and 17 (Dramaturgy-Playwriting).

Dubbed “#stayingalive,” all performances will be livestreamed at 6 pm., Phil. Time. The recitals cap over 20 Sessions of training which started last August. The program ensures that performance activities remain active through the pandemic.

Supporting the program are grants from the CCP Kalinga sa Sining, Japan Foundation Manila, Inc., the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), and the host MSU-IIT through its Center for Culture and the Arts Studies.

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‘Kalilang’ in Tales From Mindanao

IPAG livestreams a virtual ‘Kalilang,’ a portion of its Tales From Mindanao dance-music saga, for the 2020 Philippine Society of Public Administration (PSPA) International Conference, October 23-24. The event was set to be hosted by the MSU-IIT, its Chancellor Sukarno D. Tanggol being an officer and plenary speaker. Circumstances dictated that the conference attended by participants worldwide be migrated to its virtual setting.

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IPAG rides the COVID crests

Full program video of the 43rd Season launch

Riding the Crests of the Pandemic (IPAG launches its 43rd Season)

Aug. 20, 2020. IPAG asserts: no disease can stop creation and imagination as it celebrates its 43rd Season with a full line-up of programs in the “New Normal” that includes five training projects in playwriting, dramaturgy, movements and dance, arts administration, and Meranao kulintang music. (check out the links and application forms in the IPAG fb site: facebook.com/ipagarts)

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IPAG launches 43rd Season amid pandemic

IPAG launches its 43rd Season using this quarantine “moment” to adapt, to transform, and to sustain what has been its dynamic stage presence.

Founding Artistic Director Steven P.C. Fernandez writes, “ART, THE ANTIDOTE. No disease can stop Theater. And so, we MUST live!”

Fernandez continues, “What has been rudely interrupted by the COVID-19 episode is but a transition. Like in theater, this transition mirrors our plays. In a play, we stop for beats, we pause, a moment, then stir forward for more intense renewed action. We jump at opportunities with this transition to catapult ourselves to that inciting action that will lead us to our next episode—our Resurrection.”

A series of live-streamed events run up to the August 18 Tuesday launch, set 6:00 p.m., that informs the nation and IPAG’s international audiences about performance and training programs that occupies the Guild’s 43rd year towards its return to the live stage in the first quarter of 2021.

The event shall be digitally-cast through the IPAG FB page (ipagarts) and various other mediums including that of its host, the MSU-IIT. 

Amid the pandemic, IPAG and Fernandez have been recently awarded the Gador by the CCP KSS network noting the outstanding contributions they have given the nation and the world. IPAG would have also received the CCP’s highest distinction in the Gawad Sining Awards last June but awarding had to be postponed due to the circumstances.

Primary support has been extended by the CCP Cultural Exchange Department under its Kaisa Sa Sining (KSS) network in collaboration with partners MSU-IIT Center for Culture and the Arts, the NCCA, and the IPAG-Artist Resource Management, Inc.   
 
#ccpkalingangsining2020  #ccpkaisasasining  #ccpculturalexchange
#inspiring43 #inspiringipag #ipag #msuiit

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CCP KSS awards 2020 Gador to IPAG, Fernandez

JOIN US via Live Stream
July 7, (Tues) @ 11 am., Iligan City

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Meeting ID: 675 015 7595
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The MSU-IIT Integrated Performing Arts Guild (IPAG) and its Founding Artistic Director STEVEN P.C. FERNANDEZ shall be awarded the 2020 Gador by the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Kaisa sa Sining (KSS) for their outstanding contributions to Mindanao Culture and the Arts.

IPAG and Fernandez join Sining Kambayoka and five other artists-cultural workers recognized with the Gador Award.

The gador is a bulbous rounded Meranao brass jar inlaid with silver or carved with okir floral designs with a thin neck. Often presented as gift, and symbolic of the prestige of its owners, it now becomes the iconic representation for this recognition.

https://www.facebook.com/tibofernandez/videos/10160046638153502/

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Sita: The Ramayana Revisited (Prologue)

IPAG Theater Video series

IPAG’s Ramayana transcreation Sita: The Ramayana Revisited marks a milestone in Philippine Theater, being arguably the most performed Philippine Ramayana version in its place of its origin, India. IPAG’s Sita has enthralled audiences in New Delhi, Kolkata, Bangkok, Singapore, and Ayodhya, Rama’s sacred birthplace.
 
The documented video is the full-featured production of IPAG as Philippine representative in the 1st Mumbai Ramayana International Festival and chronicles the ways our Sita have been widely accepted. This performance performed with three other countries including the Cambodia’s Royal Ballet, Indonesia, and the host India. The performance took place at the large MMRDA, G-TEx ground, BKC Kalina, hosted by the Maharastra government.

Sita would have performed its Philippine premiere for the 2020 International University Theatre Association (IUTA) Festival at the CCP in August, including two other international festivals, but the pandemic has cancelled these appearances.
 
We have uploaded the video in installments, Part 1 (Introductions and Prologue) streamed today, July 2. Part 2 (Acts 1 and 2), and Part 3 (Act 3 and Epilogue) follows. We will announce the dates for broadcast of the next two parts.
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Tighod (Tides of Times)

Tighod, ebb and flow, a devised piece narrating the odyssey of a group of creatures born out from water. They discover a new realm and their change of existence leads them to a point of no return– an allusion to the proverbial cycle of mankind’s history. The production navigates in a postmodern narrative. The deconstruction through digital images, sounds, chants, dance, and movements is a laboratory piece assembled by IPAG’s dramaturgy workshop. Movement, action, reaction and response, and audience engagement, improvised and prodded by the reactions of both the characters and the viewers, shape the meanings the piece attempts to signify. Meaning-making to the audience is experienced in-the-moment caught up in the web of representations that animate the play.

Tighod premiered to acclaim at the 2019 Festival of the Asia Pacific Bond of Drama Schools at the Vietnam International Performance Academy (VIPA) in Hanoi. It was set on its Philippine premiere at the Tanghal National Theater Festival in Cebu last March when the COVID pandemic struck.
#inspiring43 #tighod

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IPAG TV series Launched

Starting June 15 (Mon), 10:00 a.m. and thereafter, we broadcast our first Theater Video UWAHIG (Water)

NEXT. June 18 (Thurs). TIGHOD (Tides of Water)

Click to watch.

NOTE: Video documentations cannot and do not capture the engagement of live performance where the presence of audiences and their responses are much part of a performance. Digital forms belong to a different platform with distinct qualities of engagement and will therefore not capture the engrossing moments of Theater.