Out of Print
In the Body of a Dancer
by Toni Potenciano
Photos courtesy of Madge Reyes.
Madge Reyes on mounting this year’s Fifth Wall Fest and dancing her way beyond the confines of a stage.
“My leg went like that,” she says, slapping the back of her wrist on her open palm. Thwack. The full weight of her body slamming down on a hard stage with her ankle wedged in between. “I swear, everything started moving in slow motion,” Madge recalls. “This never happened to me before. Not in rehearsal, let alone a performance.”
She attempted to stand, but found the pain absolutely unbearable. This wasn’t something she had ever experienced or she could shake off. And more than anyone, Madge knew that a show never stops for one injured dancer. Mustering all her strength, she limped offstage. All of this happened in less than 30 seconds.
Away from the wings and out of the way, Madge collapsed on the floor. She elevated her legs to the wall–the standard protocol for minor injuries–but the pain wasn’t getting any better. Her mother, who hadn’t realized what had happened, was wondering why someone else was performing her daughter’s solo. Up until an usher came by to inform her that her daughter urgently needed to go to the hospital.
The x-ray technician didn’t know what to make of her. Accidents happen but they don’t always come in wearing tutus, hair pulled back in a perfect bun, and full-on stage makeup. Whether he was trying to lighten the mood or was genuinely serious, he asks her, “Ma’am, may date ka?” Madge howled with laughter.
“The funny thing about that night was it was also Valentines’ Day,” she says. Instead of the adrenaline of a performance, a curtain call, and a bouquet of red roses, she was on a hospital bed, curtains drawn, and a doctor talking about the time and therapy it takes to heal from a hairline fracture.
From the big stages of CCP and RCBC, all of a sudden Madge only had her bedroom and her living room. Her right foot, strong from pointe work, was immobile and cast in plaster. “I was in denial for a long time,” Madge tells me. “I kept thinking, what now? Is this a joke? Who even am I?”
Madge Reyes photographed by Jan Mayo.To be a ballerina is to be an athlete and artist. It takes years to teach your body how to be graceful. It involves knowing your limits and seeing how much farther you can push them. Can I go any higher? Can I be lighter? But past the physical training, ballet is still an art. More than discipline, dancers have to draw from an even deeper wellspring: Devotion. It’s one thing to become a good ballerina in the technique sense, but it is a whole different thing if you want to be remembered as an artist.
“Dancing is my form of walking,” Madge tells me. “If you count baby ballet, I’ve been doing it for about 26 years. My whole life practically. I just never stopped and I just always wanted to dance.”
Madge started dancing when she was three. Teachers saw in her something of a prodigy and sent her to junior competitions abroad. In 2004, at the age of 13, she was offered an apprenticeship contract with a professional ballet company which she turned down. “I was too young,” says Madge. In 2007, at 16 years old, she won the prestigious Luva Adameit Special Award, an award for outstanding Filipina dancers. Then In 2009, Madge joined Ballet Philippines as an Apprentice, marking the start of her professional ballet career. She was promoted to rank of Soloist in 2012 when Madge was just 21, which made her one of the younger soloists in the company. She was a promising one, often given larger roles as she worked as an understudy to her seniors. These roles were opportunities to develop her style and to make a name for herself as an up-and-coming ballerina. Madge’s trajectory was clear. Maybe within a few years, Madge could have become a principal dancer, the highest rank for dancers in ballet.
But recovery wasn’t as swift as she liked. “It took months for me to just step on my feet comfortably,” Madge says. “The company started mounting all these productions without me and I guess it was really just the fear of being left behind, not progressing, and just not doing the best thing I knew how to do.” 2014 was Madge’s last year with Ballet Philippines.
But it was also her sixth and final year at the College of Fine Arts in UP Diliman. As a professional ballerina, she was considered a working student. This meant taking the minimum amount of units to accommodate rehearsal and training. Post-injury, she suddenly found herself with the most free time she has ever had. “I became normal,” she jokes. But even while away, Madge’s focus never wavered. “Dance was still in everything I did.”
Her undergraduate thesis was a film called “Improve,” a tool for Filipino choreographers and contemporary dancers. It won best thesis when she graduated in 2015. In 2017, she directed an 11-minute dance film called “Lucid” which was projected onto the exterior facade of the BGC Maybank Performing Arts Theater as an installation. “I’m very interested in space,” Madge tells me, “and how dance fits in it.”
“Dancing is my form of walking,” Madge tells me. “If you count baby ballet, I’ve been doing it for about 26 years. My whole life practically. I just never stopped and I just always wanted to dance.”
Madge started dancing when she was three. Teachers saw in her something of a prodigy and sent her to junior competitions abroad. In 2004, at the age of 13, she was offered an apprenticeship contract with a professional ballet company which she turned down. “I was too young,” says Madge. In 2007, at 16 years old, she won the prestigious Luva Adameit Special Award, an award for outstanding Filipina dancers. Then In 2009, Madge joined Ballet Philippines as an Apprentice, marking the start of her professional ballet career. She was promoted to rank of Soloist in 2012 when Madge was just 21, which made her one of the younger soloists in the company. She was a promising one, often given larger roles as she worked as an understudy to her seniors. These roles were opportunities to develop her style and to make a name for herself as an up-and-coming ballerina. Madge’s trajectory was clear. Maybe within a few years, Madge could have become a principal dancer, the highest rank for dancers in ballet.
But recovery wasn’t as swift as she liked. “It took months for me to just step on my feet comfortably,” Madge says. “The company started mounting all these productions without me and I guess it was really just the fear of being left behind, not progressing, and just not doing the best thing I knew how to do.” 2014 was Madge’s last year with Ballet Philippines.
But it was also her sixth and final year at the College of Fine Arts in UP Diliman. As a professional ballerina, she was considered a working student. This meant taking the minimum amount of units to accommodate rehearsal and training. Post-injury, she suddenly found herself with the most free time she has ever had. “I became normal,” she jokes. But even while away, Madge’s focus never wavered. “Dance was still in everything I did.”
Her undergraduate thesis was a film called “Improve,” a tool for Filipino choreographers and contemporary dancers. It won best thesis when she graduated in 2015. In 2017, she directed an 11-minute dance film called “Lucid” which was projected onto the exterior facade of the BGC Maybank Performing Arts Theater as an installation. “I’m very interested in space,” Madge tells me, “and how dance fits in it.”
In 2018, she received a grant from the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) for a research fellowship in New York to study the art of screen dance or dance film. This was to augment her vision, reads her artist bio on the ACC website, of “promoting installations of value.” The fellowship took place in the latter part of 2019.
Madge returned home last February to a country that was only just beginning to grasp the threat of the pandemic. As lockdowns were announced, mass gatherings and events–the bread and butter of the performing arts–were the first to go. Cancellations came first, but as the months went by, some of these turned into closures. For those who were able, the only recourse was to go digital.
“Lots of dance performances were going online,” Madge recalls. “Some dance companies did better than others because they already had a digital database, but others, even the ones abroad, didn’t have that foresight,” she says. “Many of these, though, were filmed performances,” Madge says. Not all of them were dance films.
Madge returned home last February to a country that was only just beginning to grasp the threat of the pandemic. As lockdowns were announced, mass gatherings and events–the bread and butter of the performing arts–were the first to go. Cancellations came first, but as the months went by, some of these turned into closures. For those who were able, the only recourse was to go digital.
“Lots of dance performances were going online,” Madge recalls. “Some dance companies did better than others because they already had a digital database, but others, even the ones abroad, didn’t have that foresight,” she says. “Many of these, though, were filmed performances,” Madge says. Not all of them were dance films.
You can distinguish filmed performances and dance films by checking intent. A filmed performance is “setting up a tripod in front of a stage and pressing record,” Madge explains. Here, film is used as a tool to preserve a live performance. Archiving, essentially. On the other hand, dance film is a collaboration between director, dancer, choreographer, and cinematographer. The pas de deux of the art of dance and the craft of film.
Another key difference is the use of space and perception. “When you’re choreographing for a stage, your audience can only see the front of the stage and a little bit of the back. So you only consider these things.” Madge says. “But in dance filmmaking, you get to see things you wouldn’t normally see from a live performance.”
Things like a dancer’s eyes, face, or fingertips. An arched back up close, all sinews and bones. With dance film, a director’s repertoire expands from just the usual lighting, set design, and make-up. Dance films, unlike live performances, can be sped up, slowed down, and played again and again.
Strictly speaking, dance film is any film that uses dance to convey central themes. There are experimental films like Chantal Akerman’s documentary called One Day Pina Asked, a montage of interviews and performances of the avant-garde choreographer Pina Bausch and her dance troupe. There is also Bookanima: Dance, a seven-minute stop motion film by Korean director Shon Kim where there are no actual dancers, but the illustrations of instructional dance books set to music.
Under this definition, music videos can be dance films, particularly those that use dance and choreography to tell their stories. The endless loops of Chaka Khan’s “Like Sugar”, the 52 dancers grinding off the wall inParris Goebbel’s film called “Yummy by Justin Bieber”, and the seemingly unbroken take of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” are all fine examples of music videos as dance films.
Early in May, I got a message from Madge. “I have this crazy idea. I can’t type it out, can you get on a call?” Skipping the niceties and salutations, she declares right away, “I want to stage an international dance film festival in October.”
“I’m calling it FIFTH WALL FEST,” she tells me. Naming it after the wall that exists after the theatre's fourth wall, the metaphorical wall between audience and stage. The fifth wall, Madge tells me, is the wall that comes up after a cultural experience, when you leave the venue and return to the mundane everyday. “The festival wants to break this wall,” Madge tells me. “We want to bring dance closer to people in the hopes that someday it will be the other way around. We want people to want dance.”
On October 8, a day after FIFTH WALL FEST opened, Madge told me she was starting to feel a little tired. “My body is finally connecting,” she tells me. “I’m starting to feel the strain of all that work. I know we’re only on Day 2 but I’m already feeling sad that it’s going to end,” she laughs.
“Don’t you want to enjoy it for just a little bit?” I ask.
“Maybe after. There’s still work to do,” Madge says.
Madge mounted FIFTH WALL FEST in five months. The festival itself lasted for five days from October 7 to 11. “Everything in fives,” Madge laughs. They showcased 57 films, 12 of which were Filipino-made including a film directed by Madge herself. The selection spans films of dancers struggling in their own cities, quarantine shorts, and experimental films.
It was five months of extroversion and emails, something Madge has never enjoyed. “I’d wake up and my first instinct would just be to read my emails,” she tells me. “We were emailing people from all over the world for films. And I have to say that Europeans really take their summers seriously, they really won’t reply when they’re on vacation.”
She called up everybody. Fellows from New York, colleagues from dance, friends of friends. She did the unglamorous work of looking for sponsors and finding grants, until one day she got one. “When the money from the Japan Foundation came in, that’s when it dawned on me that this can be more than what it is. We can make it bigger.”
The festival included a competition with a star-studded grand jury which had National Artist Alice Reyes, Elysa Wendi of Cinemovement, Naoto Iina of the International Dance Film Festival of Japan, Anna Alexandre of DAN.CIN.LAB, and Simona Lisi of the Cinematica Festival on the panel. With the exception of Reyes, the rest of the panel are renowned figures for dance film in their countries. “Film is the most practical medium in documenting and preserving dance,” Madge tells me. “We need to be resourceful if we are to continue our craft during these times.”
“I’m already excited for next year,” Madge says. It had only been a mere two weeks since the festival ended and she was already planning for 2021. “I’ve been in touch with people who are going to help us bring the festival to the next steps.”
Madge often talked about her team. Consistently, in every interview, she brought up how the biggest adjustment was learning how to work with others. “I’m an only child, I was a soloist, and I was also an independent-slash-freelance dancer. I’m still not used to working with a team this closely.”
To be an only child and a soloist is to be selfish. “And I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” Madge says. “I just knew what I wanted, in dance, in life. And I was confident I’d always find a way.” But the effect of being surrounded by others on a regular basis, albeit virtual, was changing her.
“It was the second to the last meeting before we opened the festival, when I realized how lucky I was,” Madge says. “To put up a good team. I really take pride in the fact that I chose the right people. It makes a difference when you like who you work with,” she says. “I find myself more generous, with my time, thoughts, and ideas.”
“Don’t you want to enjoy it for just a little bit?” I ask.
“Maybe after. There’s still work to do,” Madge says.
Madge mounted FIFTH WALL FEST in five months. The festival itself lasted for five days from October 7 to 11. “Everything in fives,” Madge laughs. They showcased 57 films, 12 of which were Filipino-made including a film directed by Madge herself. The selection spans films of dancers struggling in their own cities, quarantine shorts, and experimental films.
It was five months of extroversion and emails, something Madge has never enjoyed. “I’d wake up and my first instinct would just be to read my emails,” she tells me. “We were emailing people from all over the world for films. And I have to say that Europeans really take their summers seriously, they really won’t reply when they’re on vacation.”
She called up everybody. Fellows from New York, colleagues from dance, friends of friends. She did the unglamorous work of looking for sponsors and finding grants, until one day she got one. “When the money from the Japan Foundation came in, that’s when it dawned on me that this can be more than what it is. We can make it bigger.”
The festival included a competition with a star-studded grand jury which had National Artist Alice Reyes, Elysa Wendi of Cinemovement, Naoto Iina of the International Dance Film Festival of Japan, Anna Alexandre of DAN.CIN.LAB, and Simona Lisi of the Cinematica Festival on the panel. With the exception of Reyes, the rest of the panel are renowned figures for dance film in their countries. “Film is the most practical medium in documenting and preserving dance,” Madge tells me. “We need to be resourceful if we are to continue our craft during these times.”
“I’m already excited for next year,” Madge says. It had only been a mere two weeks since the festival ended and she was already planning for 2021. “I’ve been in touch with people who are going to help us bring the festival to the next steps.”
Madge often talked about her team. Consistently, in every interview, she brought up how the biggest adjustment was learning how to work with others. “I’m an only child, I was a soloist, and I was also an independent-slash-freelance dancer. I’m still not used to working with a team this closely.”
To be an only child and a soloist is to be selfish. “And I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” Madge says. “I just knew what I wanted, in dance, in life. And I was confident I’d always find a way.” But the effect of being surrounded by others on a regular basis, albeit virtual, was changing her.
“It was the second to the last meeting before we opened the festival, when I realized how lucky I was,” Madge says. “To put up a good team. I really take pride in the fact that I chose the right people. It makes a difference when you like who you work with,” she says. “I find myself more generous, with my time, thoughts, and ideas.”
“I suppose it’s like dancing with an audience,” Madge says. With, she says. Not just for. “You have to let them in. You have to feel their energy if you want to be a better dancer,” Madge says.
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Fifth Wall Fest team, final sign off before opening day.
“A good dancer is someone who has been through a lot and can translate that to the stage.”
“What do you miss most about performing?” I ask her.
“Well, I still perform, but the one thing I miss is performing at the CCP Main Theater.”
“I grew up in the CCP,” Madge says. “It was really a special place. You’d just see dancers taking naps in the corridors or hallways. Some days I’d be sitting in that iconic staircase, all alone, and I’d think to myself that nobody else gets to do this, to have this kind of access.”
Ballet Philippines was the first dance company in residence at the CCP, which gives them the right to dance on the most prestigious stage in the country: The CCP Main Theater. It was founded in 1969 by Alice Reyes and Eddie Elejar. What had started as a summer dance workshop for ballet and contemporary dance transformed into the CCP Dance Company. They rebranded to Ballet Philippines some time in the 80s, allegedly to avoid confusion with the Communist Party of the Philippines. Back then, to be part of Ballet Philippines was every young dancer’s dream because it meant dancing on that stage.
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Madge Reyes as Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, CCP Main Theater, 2011
“There’s something about how the theater was made,” Madge says. It’s as if the stage was constructed not only for the audience, but with the performer in mind. Madge holds her arms up in a perfect V. “The shape just made it possible for you to see just who you were performing for. There’s no feeling like it.” she says.
Madge tells me to find yourself as a dancer you first must get lost in the dance. You have to train and practice until the dance is a part of you, embedded in your body to the point of muscle memory, to move without thinking. “Even after years of no rehearsal, I still know the nuance of an 8-count step. It’s still in my body. It never leaves you.”
“A good dancer is someone who has been through a lot and can translate that to the stage,” Madge says. Once the technique has been mastered, the next step is to embody the role, body and soul, until no difference remains between the character and the dancer. “That’s when you forget everything surrounding you. Nothing but the dance itself.” A dancer’s body is nothing but the perfect vessel.
“Some people might think that dance is so lofty, aloof, but it’s not. Like any art, but maybe even more so for dance, it tears you apart,” she says.
Then you hear it. The sound that brings the dancer back and makes everything worth it. A sound that says I see you, the hours you put in, and your heart. “It’s the applause, then you go in for the bow. It’s so humbling really,” Madge tells me. “The moment you hit the stage and you just let go, you just be, and then you let other people see that. You let people in by letting yourself go.”
“I miss it, for sure. But my injury, if anything at all, made me realize that there was a life outside CCP,” Madge says. “Cliché as that sounds, I realized I missed out on a lot. I think while I was healing physically, I was also healing mentally and spiritually. Because I got to take a step back. The CCP was all I knew… It was important for me to get injured, I probably wouldn’t have gotten this far.”
“Well, I still perform, but the one thing I miss is performing at the CCP Main Theater.”
“I grew up in the CCP,” Madge says. “It was really a special place. You’d just see dancers taking naps in the corridors or hallways. Some days I’d be sitting in that iconic staircase, all alone, and I’d think to myself that nobody else gets to do this, to have this kind of access.”
Ballet Philippines was the first dance company in residence at the CCP, which gives them the right to dance on the most prestigious stage in the country: The CCP Main Theater. It was founded in 1969 by Alice Reyes and Eddie Elejar. What had started as a summer dance workshop for ballet and contemporary dance transformed into the CCP Dance Company. They rebranded to Ballet Philippines some time in the 80s, allegedly to avoid confusion with the Communist Party of the Philippines. Back then, to be part of Ballet Philippines was every young dancer’s dream because it meant dancing on that stage.
Madge Reyes as Princess Aurora in Sleeping Beauty, CCP Main Theater, 2011“There’s something about how the theater was made,” Madge says. It’s as if the stage was constructed not only for the audience, but with the performer in mind. Madge holds her arms up in a perfect V. “The shape just made it possible for you to see just who you were performing for. There’s no feeling like it.” she says.
Madge tells me to find yourself as a dancer you first must get lost in the dance. You have to train and practice until the dance is a part of you, embedded in your body to the point of muscle memory, to move without thinking. “Even after years of no rehearsal, I still know the nuance of an 8-count step. It’s still in my body. It never leaves you.”
“A good dancer is someone who has been through a lot and can translate that to the stage,” Madge says. Once the technique has been mastered, the next step is to embody the role, body and soul, until no difference remains between the character and the dancer. “That’s when you forget everything surrounding you. Nothing but the dance itself.” A dancer’s body is nothing but the perfect vessel.
“Some people might think that dance is so lofty, aloof, but it’s not. Like any art, but maybe even more so for dance, it tears you apart,” she says.
Then you hear it. The sound that brings the dancer back and makes everything worth it. A sound that says I see you, the hours you put in, and your heart. “It’s the applause, then you go in for the bow. It’s so humbling really,” Madge tells me. “The moment you hit the stage and you just let go, you just be, and then you let other people see that. You let people in by letting yourself go.”
“I miss it, for sure. But my injury, if anything at all, made me realize that there was a life outside CCP,” Madge says. “Cliché as that sounds, I realized I missed out on a lot. I think while I was healing physically, I was also healing mentally and spiritually. Because I got to take a step back. The CCP was all I knew… It was important for me to get injured, I probably wouldn’t have gotten this far.”
I have known Madge since we were children. We met in first grade at our traditional all-girls school. When I’d head home for the day, Madge would punt off to ballet lessons. Not an uncommon occupation for girls that age with parents who could afford it. The holy women of our school peddled it to us and our parents. Ballet, they reasoned, offered holistic development both mentally and physically without sacrificing grace or femininity. Plus, at the end of the year, there was a dance recital.
But as our bodies started changing, after-school ballet became a relic of girlhood. We were growing up in the aughties, navigating puberty at the dawn of social media. We traded in our tutus to write testimonials on Friendster or to chat with boys our age on Yahoo! Messenger, but Madge was the exception. While we were getting our first periods, she was competing in ballet competitions in Singapore, China, and Australia.
Although we attended different universities, Madge and I stayed in touch. Like a lot of people, I saw college as a chance to reinvent myself because I wasn’t satisfied with who I was in high school. It was the sort of environment that championed conventionally beautiful, exceptionally talented, and predominantly wealthy girls, and since I was none of the above I was content to be mediocre. But college revealed to me that there was a life far more exciting and enjoyable than everything I knew in high school. I spent those years trying everything, meeting everyone, which meant relegating anything that had to do with high school to the past. But no matter how much I tried to disassociate, Madge remained a recurring character.
To me, Madge was a dancer in the same way I had a mole on my right cheek. It was an identifier, a fact, no further questions. I had never asked her about ballet and she never told me about it. We talked instead about our other preoccupations: Crushes who didn’t love us back, schoolwork, or idle gossip about people we knew back in the day. Madge’s life as a dancer remained largely a mystery to me.
That is, until 2013. Madge invited me to watch Giselle, a classic ballet about love, mortality, and madness. She told me she had free tickets and wondered if I might be interested in watching. For all the years we had been friends, it would be my first ballet and my first time in the CCP Main Theater.
Barely keeping up with Act I, I finally see Madge when she opens Act II. She plays Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, the ruler of an undead horde of ex-brides who were jilted at the altar. Cause of death: Broken hearts. With a wave of an arm, she summons the Wilis from their forest graves and they rise, ghosts in bridalwear, ready to exact their revenge on the male sex by luring unlucky travelers into an endless dance until they drop dead from exhaustion.
Madge glides across the stage wholly on her toes, en pointe. The moment she casts off her veil is when the small and delicate steps change. She leans forward, legs extended in the perfect penché. Then she takes more space, leaping, legs spread at the apex of a jump with exultant jetés. If any of this was supposed to be tragic, I never sensed it. There was something about Myrtha, about Madge, and the triumph of her love of dance. She loved it more than men, more than love, and she used this love as a weapon. Who’d have thought I was going to walk away from the CCP thinking about this 19th-century accidental feminist ghost?
That night, Madge met up with us in front of the lobby. She had changed out of her costume but kept her make-up on. We crossed the street in search of drinks our college allowances could afford. “I didn’t understand anything,” says a friend of ours, “but cheers to you, Myrtha!” Madge laughs, a genuine one, and we raise our glasses. To Myrtha, to Madge.
The next time I saw Madge was in 2014. Early that year, I slid off a rock which led to several surgeries where I had to stay home for weeks to recover. I was coming from a string of hiking mountains and for the first time I found myself stuck, grounded, and immobile. Madge, who by then was able to walk with a crutch, came over on afternoons when she didn’t have therapy. We laughed at the cruel timing of it all. How our bodies failed us right when we wanted to do so many things. We spent those afternoons dreaming of the things we would do once we could walk, run, and dance.
But as our bodies started changing, after-school ballet became a relic of girlhood. We were growing up in the aughties, navigating puberty at the dawn of social media. We traded in our tutus to write testimonials on Friendster or to chat with boys our age on Yahoo! Messenger, but Madge was the exception. While we were getting our first periods, she was competing in ballet competitions in Singapore, China, and Australia.
Although we attended different universities, Madge and I stayed in touch. Like a lot of people, I saw college as a chance to reinvent myself because I wasn’t satisfied with who I was in high school. It was the sort of environment that championed conventionally beautiful, exceptionally talented, and predominantly wealthy girls, and since I was none of the above I was content to be mediocre. But college revealed to me that there was a life far more exciting and enjoyable than everything I knew in high school. I spent those years trying everything, meeting everyone, which meant relegating anything that had to do with high school to the past. But no matter how much I tried to disassociate, Madge remained a recurring character.
To me, Madge was a dancer in the same way I had a mole on my right cheek. It was an identifier, a fact, no further questions. I had never asked her about ballet and she never told me about it. We talked instead about our other preoccupations: Crushes who didn’t love us back, schoolwork, or idle gossip about people we knew back in the day. Madge’s life as a dancer remained largely a mystery to me.
That is, until 2013. Madge invited me to watch Giselle, a classic ballet about love, mortality, and madness. She told me she had free tickets and wondered if I might be interested in watching. For all the years we had been friends, it would be my first ballet and my first time in the CCP Main Theater.
Barely keeping up with Act I, I finally see Madge when she opens Act II. She plays Myrtha, Queen of the Wilis, the ruler of an undead horde of ex-brides who were jilted at the altar. Cause of death: Broken hearts. With a wave of an arm, she summons the Wilis from their forest graves and they rise, ghosts in bridalwear, ready to exact their revenge on the male sex by luring unlucky travelers into an endless dance until they drop dead from exhaustion.
Madge glides across the stage wholly on her toes, en pointe. The moment she casts off her veil is when the small and delicate steps change. She leans forward, legs extended in the perfect penché. Then she takes more space, leaping, legs spread at the apex of a jump with exultant jetés. If any of this was supposed to be tragic, I never sensed it. There was something about Myrtha, about Madge, and the triumph of her love of dance. She loved it more than men, more than love, and she used this love as a weapon. Who’d have thought I was going to walk away from the CCP thinking about this 19th-century accidental feminist ghost?
That night, Madge met up with us in front of the lobby. She had changed out of her costume but kept her make-up on. We crossed the street in search of drinks our college allowances could afford. “I didn’t understand anything,” says a friend of ours, “but cheers to you, Myrtha!” Madge laughs, a genuine one, and we raise our glasses. To Myrtha, to Madge.
The next time I saw Madge was in 2014. Early that year, I slid off a rock which led to several surgeries where I had to stay home for weeks to recover. I was coming from a string of hiking mountains and for the first time I found myself stuck, grounded, and immobile. Madge, who by then was able to walk with a crutch, came over on afternoons when she didn’t have therapy. We laughed at the cruel timing of it all. How our bodies failed us right when we wanted to do so many things. We spent those afternoons dreaming of the things we would do once we could walk, run, and dance.
Toni Potenciano on the left, Madge Reyes on the right, sometime in 2014.Dance in the Philippines has so much potential, Madge says, and she is resolved to see it through. “Growing up, there was this idea that you weren't to be taken seriously until you’ve performed in the CCP Main Theater,” Madge says. “I know now that this isn’t true. The stage is wherever you want it to be.”
“So, do you consider yourself more of a dancer or a director?” I ask.
She tells me she sees herself a bit of both. “When I came back from New York, I was still unsure. About my career, what I wanted to do. But I knew that I still wanted to dance, I wanted to dance some more. And I had this fear about setting up a festival or a company that I wouldn’t be able to dance anymore,” she says.
“But I know it’s there. It’s in me. I’m still a dancer. I’m constantly in denial because I know even if I’m not dancing, I’m a dancer. I’ll dance until I can. Until I’m 100 years old,” she declares. “Okay, so maybe my real answer is that I’m a dancer.”
This year, Madge and I turned 29. This means we’ll have known each other for approximately 22 years, four years shy of the years Madge has been dancing. And while there are things–many things–that change, we’re lucky to count on the things that don’t. When I turn off the recording, Madge and I fall back into our seats and the idle gossip we put off for the interview. How she binge watched The O.C. right after the festival. “It just reminds me of high school,” she says. “But high school was nothing like that,” I replied. We talk about the people we knew from way back when and check up on the people we’ve grown to love in the years since. And out of everything new and uncertain, there is one thing that remains sure, as sure as the mole on my right cheek.
“Here’s a good analogy,” Madge says. “I think it’s a wheel, my life is a wheel. And at the center of it is dance. Right now, the wheel has stopped and it’s landed on Festival Director. Some time ago it was Director. But the center of it is, and will always be, dance.” ︎
“So, do you consider yourself more of a dancer or a director?” I ask.
She tells me she sees herself a bit of both. “When I came back from New York, I was still unsure. About my career, what I wanted to do. But I knew that I still wanted to dance, I wanted to dance some more. And I had this fear about setting up a festival or a company that I wouldn’t be able to dance anymore,” she says.
“But I know it’s there. It’s in me. I’m still a dancer. I’m constantly in denial because I know even if I’m not dancing, I’m a dancer. I’ll dance until I can. Until I’m 100 years old,” she declares. “Okay, so maybe my real answer is that I’m a dancer.”
This year, Madge and I turned 29. This means we’ll have known each other for approximately 22 years, four years shy of the years Madge has been dancing. And while there are things–many things–that change, we’re lucky to count on the things that don’t. When I turn off the recording, Madge and I fall back into our seats and the idle gossip we put off for the interview. How she binge watched The O.C. right after the festival. “It just reminds me of high school,” she says. “But high school was nothing like that,” I replied. We talk about the people we knew from way back when and check up on the people we’ve grown to love in the years since. And out of everything new and uncertain, there is one thing that remains sure, as sure as the mole on my right cheek.
“Here’s a good analogy,” Madge says. “I think it’s a wheel, my life is a wheel. And at the center of it is dance. Right now, the wheel has stopped and it’s landed on Festival Director. Some time ago it was Director. But the center of it is, and will always be, dance.” ︎
“I’ll dance until I can. Until I’m 100 years old.”
Toni Potenciano is a writer and strategist for And A Half.