Philippine Dance Organizations

San Francisco - Parangal Dance Company - www.parangaldance.org
Maui - La Galeria - http://www.home.roadrunner.com/~mauidzyn/dance/

Filipino Dance is a hands on way that you can learn Philippine culture and history. Philippine dance is broken down into "suites": Igorot, Maria Clara, Lumad, Moro and Pistahan. In the Igorot, Lumad and Moro dances, you can experience how different tribes' cultural practices of courtships, weddings, battles, planting/harvesting, child rearing, coming of age, etcetera, took place. Each tribe also has a distinct musical style that reflects the diversity and uniqueness of Philippine peoples, and how they reflect their local cultures and ecologies.

Through "rural" and Maria Clara dances, experience the Spanish aesthetic melded with Native cultures through costumes, posture, hand and feet movements. Also, listen to the music, and hear stringed lutes, also known as the "rondalla." How did the Spanish come to the Philippines? The Philippines were colonized by the Spanish in the 16th Century. The Philippines was part of the Spanish controlled Manila-Acapulco trade that linked the Americas (like Mexico) to Asia. Read an article on Sapatya, a "rural" Pangasinan dance dedicated to farming, that has Andalusian Spanish origins.

E-Fil Filipino Digital Archives and History Center of Hawaii

Clement and Gina are holding down the digital archives at the Fil-com Center in Waipahu, Hawaii. They have worked with the Hawaii State Archives in collecting identification cards of Filipino veterans who were recruited from Hawaii. Also, they give information on how families can preserve their collections. They also have information on Copyright and Fair use Policies that are helpful for budding archivists like myself.

To visit, contact efiladmin@efilarchives.org.

Filipino-American Library, Los Angeles

The Filipino-American Library holds books, magazines, academic journals, student papers, maps, newspaper clippings, photographs, posters, program booklets, DVDs, CDs, videos, encyclopedias, children's literature, and documents  written by Filipino and Filipino-Americans. Some key words of their collections are FAL, FAHI, PARRAL, Pamana, Filipino, Filipino-American, FilAm, Fil-Am, Pilipino, Pilipino-American, Philippines, Filipinotown, HiFi, Hi-Fi.  

The Fil-Am library is located in Los Angeles's Filipinotown, within the FASGI (Filipino-American Service Group, Inc.) compound. Filipinos in LA have also experienced displacement and evictions due to Los Angeles's redevelopment planning. The library holds dissertations from students who studied the history of Filipinos in LA and how development planning impacted them. 

Check out their website at http://www.filipinoamericanlibrary.org/ They have a great Informational Portal that links to other Filipino-American historical and cultural preservation work.

For more information, contact

Jonathan Lorenzo

Filipino American Library (FAL)

135 N. Parkview St., Historic Filipinotown

Los Angeles, CA 90026-5215

filamlibrary@sbcglobal.net 

213-382-0488

www.filipinoamericanlibrary.org

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Filipino-American-Library-FAL/16017868937?ref=ts

http://filipinoamericanlibrary.blogspot.com/

San Francisco Manilatown Archival Project

We digitize and make accessible histories of San Francisco's Manilatown and the International Hotel. Within our collections are photos and oral histories of Filipino migrant farmworkers, merchant marines and business owners, commonly known as the manongs. There were also manangs who did not have a large population prior to 1965. But they were part of organizations, businesses and some families.

Many of these Filipin@s brought with them their urban/rural memories and experiences from the Philippines and all over the Asia Pacific rim. These people were part of San Francisco's Manilatown that was/is located on Kearny St. Due to redevelopment planning in the 1970s, many of the Filipino owned and Filipino serving businesses closed down because rents were too high. The only marker left of Manilatown is the I-Hotel and Manilatown center, located on 868 Kearny St. San Francisco.

Our collections also hold the memory of the August 4, 1977 International Hotel eviction. There are photos, oral histories, legal documents and videos of the eviction and activists who attempted to stop the eviction. The collections give details on how this eviction took place, the strategies of resistance, and how people preserved to rebuild the I-Hotel 25 years later.

Contact us at mhf@manilatown.org or call us at 415 399 9580 to schedule a visit or research at our archives.