Sandugo ‘24 Panglao launching feature

15 of 18 Ms Bohol Sandugo candidates

PANGLAO, Bohol, June 15 (PIA)—Sandugo sa Bohol 2024 festivities formally opened at the Rue de Premiere in Alona Panglao, with a presentation of 15 official candidates of the annual Miss Bohol Sandugo, and a mighty challenge for the organizers in the next months’ celebrations.

The Sandugo 2024 organizers have been dared to bring out the best of Bohol in tough to choreograph a festive mood in a dance to the three quarters of a beat, something that the past Sandugo choreographers miserably failed to do.

Congresswoman Maria Vanessa C. Aumentado, speaking through Jaypee Maslog said this year’s Sandugo sa Bohol would bring out the celebrations to different parts of Bohol, in a move to finally involve the Boholanos to the festival that since 1988 has been customarily celebrated in the streets of Tagbilaran.

“The major highlights of the festival would be staged in different areas in the province, which would give more opportunities for Boholanos to enjoy the sights and sounds,” Aumentado through Maslog said.

Instead of focusing the three-months long events in Tagbilaran, some activities of this year’s Sandugo would be held in the towns, and groups are encouraged to organize the usual sandugo streams of events in the towns, organizers during the launching said.

Also at the launching, 15 official candidates of the Miss Bohol Sandugo sa Bohol 2024 had their first public presentation.

Presented were candidates from Talibon, Garcia Hernandez, Ubay, Duero, Jagna, Pilar, Valencia, Tubigon, San Isidro, Loboc, Sevilla, Tagbilaran City, Sikatuna, Anda and Dauis.

Two more candidates could not physically make it to the public presentation in the Sandugo launching, while organizers said some candidates are also joining in the official start of the competitions searching for the festival’s fairest.

STREET DANCING

Earlier, as the festival, which was envisioned to become the hallmark of Bohol’s biggest tourism promotional campaign picked the exotic mardigras beat of the Carribbean, cultural researches and cultural workers in Bohol sat down to redraw the Sandugo streetdancing: Sandugo’s most festive activity that often jampacks the city’s premier thoroughfare.

Those years, the introduction of the Bol-anon Kuradang: a native dance with slight traces of Hispanic influence using the challenging ¾ beat in a dance, has remained a challenge to the sensibilities of creative choreographers whose bias are the no-sweat beat of the mardigras adopted from the neighboring festival; the influential Sinulog sa Sugbo.

From the grounding dance workshops came the innovation in formal streetdancing with the Kuradang as performed by Loon’s Sitio Napo brought out the creative juices of the meat bringing out the flavour of the Boholano traditions, practices and customs retold to the younger generations through dance.

And then the gay swaying and sweeping and deliriously funny kuradang slowly retreated to the sidelines, kicked out by the boisterous Sinulog masked in a trying-hard Sandugo, courtesy of the proliferation of commercial choreographers who have no respect for the local tradition.

This year’s preparations had already been attended by choreographers, some of them reportedly from the famed festivals of the country.

And if the launching presentations were to tell, the preview of the jazzy presentation of the dances to re-enact the historic blood compact, is telling of possible improvisations without first scouring the depths of the original steps of the kuradang.

According to acting governor Vice Governor Victor Dionisio Balite, the three-months long celebration would be bannered by three timelines of the Boholano fiesta: Abregana (Bisperas) Kasumaran (katumanan) and Liwas.

Period correct costumes, basic kuradang steps, historically correct details were interestingly presented by Lungsuranon Performing Arts Ensemble, Lumad Panglaoanon, and other cultural numbers including a more honest rendition of the kuradang, all to honor and celebrate the first ever recorded internatonal treaty of friendship happening in Bohol. (PIABohol)

MISS SANDUGO 2024 CANDIDATES. Miss Tagbilaran City, who won as Miss Sandugo 2023 presented the 15 candidates for the 2024 Miss Sandugo during the launching of the Sandugo sa Bohol 2024 at the Rue de Premiere in Alona. (PIABOhol/ivy balio)