The image was brought to San Jose Parish church and has been enshrined there since then where a novena in His honor is held every Friday. The first parish feast of Señor Santo Niño was celebrated in 1969, a year after His arrival in Iloilo City. The culmination of the nine-day novena was the fluvial procession. From 1969, the celebration was casually called "Iloilo Ati-Atihan" to differentiate it from that more famous Mardi-Gras -- like revelry of Kalibo, Aklan.

Through the years, however, the Dinagyang festival has not only meant fun and laughter for the Ilonggos. It has also become a period of thanksgiving and offering for all the blessings received. Hala Bira!

Iloilo's Dinagyang 2004: Barrio fiesta in grand proportions

Romulo T. Luib, BusinessWorld Senior Reporter

A pair of luscious breasts paraded themselves on a street where close to a hundred bodies painted in black perform for a festival competition. The proud breasts, belonging to a sexy starlet probably known to a few local movie producers, competed for attention with ati-atihan performers right in the area supposedly cordoned off for Iloilo City's Dinagyang Festival 2003 dancers.

In any typical barrio fiesta in most Philippine villages, such urban brashness and those breasts are winners, like half open watermelon on a bed of crispy pinasugbo (grilled cooking).

Not that Dinagyang is a small-scale barrio fiesta. But it showcases, in quite grand proportions, Filipino revelry in far-flung towns and villages -- organizers try their damn best to educate visitors about the place's cultural heritage while politicos "gatecrash" tagging along with them movie stars and display their "importance" in society.

Philippine festivals like Dinagyang essentially celebrate the religious aspect of a town's way of life or, for that matter, its history. That's how it is on paper -- for people to remind themselves about the past so at least generations to come will have a way to trace their identity amid the rapids of cultural change.

No way can an observer ignore that Dinagyang succeeds in the task of catching people's attention to a page of history. The dances are just too spectular even a foreign visitor would ask what the message is.

Forget about the explosion of colors that decorate the bodies of performers for a while. It's the surge of primal energy among the dancers when it's their turn to take center stage that catches a visitor's attention.

One group that goes by the name of Tribu Kongo stood out in how it executed rhythmic movements of ethnic group Aeta, or Ati as they are commonly referred to in the Visayas group of Philippine islands. Each dance step was simple and raw, and the entire presentation apparently tried to refuse any choreographer's tendency to pepper it with pop culture.

Spectators, however, could not restrain the urge to clap to the beat of the drums. You'd wonder if it's the talaba (oyster), that is so cheap and abundant in Panay island, that powered the Tribu Kongo dancers to execute a million movements per second. And there were close to a hundred of them, like precise hands of Swiss watches.

I've watched television footages of similar festival dances in the country, but there definitely is a huge difference when performers are just meters away from you as you struggle to maintain regular breathing amid the burst of energy. I watched the performances up close and concluded it wasn't about graceful execution of each dance step but the kind of energy that you feel like being among hundreds of thousands of humans revved up to break the barricades at Mendiola (a bridge near Malacañan Palace more common to street parliamentarians).

Pop culture, however, has markedly invaded street performances of Dinagyang as could be seen from groups executing "Asereje" dance steps or gyrating like they were in Rio de Janeiro rather than in Iloilo celebrating the Ati's acceptance of Christianity. Some boys, clothed in female costumes, attempted to outdo the girls in extending their limbs to as far as 100 meters. Whether the real Ati tribesmen would acknowledge that or not, the gays also venerated the image of El Señor, or Sto. Niño, while copying the intensity of choreographer Maribeth Bichara's moves. The desire to max out the pageantry is amazing an observer would suspect ballet dancers would be tapped to do pirouettes for an ati-atihan routine on asphalt road next year. Hip-hop acrobatics have been integrated in the routines of some groups competing for the Dinagyang prizes. It wouldn't be surprising to hear drummer boys do their own translation of rap music to accompany pseudo-tribal dancing next January. Extravagant production was the norm at Dinagyang's contest proper or the ati-atihan. Mobile platforms were created to mount countless tableaus that some competing groups choreographed to declare they were ready for a debut at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

I waited for somebody garbed a la Sto. Niño to do a balancing act on thin wire after a few groups displayed their deftness in circus routines as if aiming to elevate the Sto. Niño close to the Iloilo clouds.

A day before the Dinagyang proper, the Ilonggos were treated to another set of street performances by groups that also go by tribal names. In kasadyahan (or merriment by loose translation), groups performed on the street to the beat of drums dances that tell the struggles of their Christian lives with El Señor Sto. Niño still taking center stage.

Performers for Dinagyang's Kasadyahan were no less amazing in the display of production excesses. Every few minutes, a group would freeze into so many tableaus that are very much similar to the Filipino's penchant for a photo montage without a focal point.

But some groups managed to elicit rounds of applause such as Tribu Kahilwayan from Sta. Barbara which is a few towns away from Iloilo City. The dance depicted a love story told in a creative way from courtship and procreation (the protagonists atop a bamboo ladder that is rotated) to tragedy (the children swallowed by some kind of natural disaster portrayed using yards of textile, bamboos and human bodies).

Production designs further heightened in the Dinagyang proper with elaborate costumes and props no rural barangay could provide without a fat check from commercial sponsors. It was apparent Dinagyang would not be that colorful without funds from the sponsors and the latter made sure the favor was returned. One ati-atihan group on exit chanted a line popularized by a dance group in a noontime show on a top television network. Fast food Jollibee's mascot made an appearance too on one group's exit. The bee wasn't painted in black, which is the norm for any ati-atihan that celebrates an ethnic group's embrace of Christianity. One of the country's top telecommunications firms was rumored to have spent PhP800,000 on a Dinagyang group. Some dancers are paid per rehearsal, which speaks of the emerging commercial nature of the festivities. Locals don't seem to mind this development for as long as the Ilonggo man on the street is treated to a variety show fare. But like any Philippine brand of noontime horsing-around television show, the dances that somehow could be differentiated only through costumes got boring after a while. For five hours last Sunday, I sat in a shaded part of the Iloilo City Freedom Grandstand and was lulled either by the repetition or the indolence that the midday sun brought into my system.

Worry not, the politicos will be there to save the festival from sliding anywhere close to boring. In between performances, a senator arrived on board an expensive vehicle that would make a U-turn right on the performance area cordoned off from spectators. A few more tribal dancing and another mobile telephone-toting senator would arrive like a royal patron of the festival. And then another. The senator makes a dramatic entrance (and exit at times).

Dinagyang has yet to really become a regular attraction to foreign tourists based on the number of foreigners that one could count in his fingers in Iloilo City. But not a few locals in Panay region converged in the city for the festivities. If organizers invite the entire senate in 2004, you'd suspect a quorum could be had at the Dinagyang festival.

Locals seemed to welcome the rude intermission from politicians. The masters of ceremonies would promptly herald the arrival of this and that political big shot from Metro Manila, a trait typical of a barrio fiesta gathering where the presence of any politico, corrupt or not, is likely to be a big deal.

And then a local political leader brought with him this young and sultry body from show business and ushered her into the performance area while a group was sweating it out, revering the Sto. Niño image.

Ah, she flipped her cellophaned locks this way and that way as she glided around acknowledging smiles from the star-struck. The drums were loud, but her supple breasts, generously exposed, were louder the local photographers had to ask her to pose in front of bodies painted in black. In Oscars fashion, she romanced the camera for fleeting seconds there, blocking the judges' view of the ongoing performance.

The sun was rather too furious.

The sight of Ms. Artista and the senators were such icebreakers to a marathon display of Iloilo City's cultural heritage. It's a 30-year-old festival that the local archbishop likens to how parents try to entertain that little bundle of joy in the household.

Dinagyang traces its roots to the staging of an ati-atihan, a dance festival where performers paint their bodies black to look like the dark Aetas, about three decades back.

From the presence alone of politicians who are good at telling where the biggest crowds are, Dinagyang has gone a long way from the first fluvial procession that capped a nine-day novena recited as part of the first parish feast of Señor Sto. Niño in 1969.

Indeed, it is a spectacle for foreign visitors interested not only in how tribal dancing could transform into grand productions but also in how Filipinos put up with barrio fiesta habits carried over into a festival that the city wishes could attract more visitors from around the world.

(Published in BusinessWorld newspaper's 31 January 2003 edition.)