Thousands flocked to the Cultural Center of the Philippines recently to check out the Pasinaya, CCP’s annual open house festival, which featured an array of diverse workshops and performances. Pasinaya 2017 was billed Palihan at Palabas (Workshops and Shows) with the theme “Arts for Peace”. This year’s Pasinaya introduced the Palihan (Workshop) with the addition of a whole day, on February 4 from 9:45 a.m. to 2:45 p.m., consisting of workshops on performing arts, popular arts, visual arts and literature conducted by leading artists and teachers.
In the field of dance, Pasinaya Palihan included hiphop, ballroom and folk dance workshops, ballet for babies and adults, modern ballet and creative movement for teachers. Theater workshops included musical theatre; children’s, teens, and adult theater workshops. Music workshops comprised those for classical guitar, rondalla, Philippine musical instruments, percussion, chamber music, solo singing, children and youth choir singing, handbell ringing and ukulele.
The Palabas portion of Pasinaya 2017 was held on Sunday, February 5 when audiences took a peek of the 2017 CCP performance season. CCP resident companies such as the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra, University of Santo Tomas Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Philippines, Philippine Ballet Theater, Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group, Bayanihan Philippine National Folk Dance Company, National Music Competitions for Young Artists (NAMCYA), Philippine Madrigal Singers and Tanghalang Pilipino performed excerpts from 2017-2018 seasons while other artists and performing groups performed throughout the day. Pasinaya Palabas started with a pre-show at 7:30am and ended with a People’s Gala at 6pm.
The CCP Pasinaya Open House Festival is on its 13th year of presenting dance, music and theater performances; film screenings, activities in visual arts and literature, in all the CCP venues. The past two years saw the Festival expanding its performances to partner museums in the vicinity of the CCP. New venues of the Pasinaya this year included Avellana Gallery, Galleria Duemila, 98B Collaboratory and Hub Make Lab in Binondo and Liwasang Balagtas in Pandacan.