ART - Gift to the Gods

Culminating Ballet Philippines’ 53rd season is Diyosa, a multidisciplinary production created by the architect, Carlo Calma

- Chit L Lijauco

Ballet Philippines went into the digital platform during the Covid lockdown to continue its performances for the benefit of its audience as well as its dancers. It produced 42 short videos via Zoom and choreographed by its artistic director, Mikhail Martynyk. One of these was Diyosa, a 4-minute multi-disciplinary ballet expanded into a full-length dance to end the company’s 53rd season. Taking on the task is the architect, Carlo Calma.

“Carlo is an architect who explores many other art forms,” says Kathleen Liechtenstein, BP president. “His architecture is also modern but very much in the realm of what is current and relevant. He designs around nature, using it instead of changing it.”

According to Liechtenstein, Calma fits right into the mould of the company’s shift to a multidisciplinary collaboration between ballet and all forms of art—poetry and film, food and fashion, mental and medical issues, everything! “This is the global trend now for theatre. The great ballet companies are eschewing the one-level entertainment form,” Liechtenstein reported on her visits to major companies worldwide last year.

The invitation to lengthen Diyosa piqued Calma’s hyperactive creativity, despite the limited time made available to him. “Gabby Barredo [the late kinetic artist] produced Opera in one year; I had only five months to gala night,” he says.