DANCE

ARTS Tolentino embraces Rebel Spirits in city cemetery

by Carlito Pablo

This year’s Queer Arts Festival marks a homecoming for dancer and choreographer Alvin Tolentino.

The founder and artistic director of the Co.ERASGA dance company said that he was one of the original performers in the Vancouver festival when it started as Pride in Art in 1998.

“It’s kind of a full circle to come back to it and to be part of it again,” Tolentino told the Straight in a phone interview.

The 2021 Queer Arts Festival runs until August 13 and reunites Tolentino with E. Kage of Onibana Taiko.

Onibana Taiko is a three-member ensemble that blends traditional Japanese drumming with other art forms and what festival organizers describe as “feminist queer punk aesthetics”.

The band formed in 2016, bringing together Kage, Noriko Kobayashi, and Leslie Komori. In connection with Kage, Tolentino related that he created a work called OrienTik/Portrait in 2005. In it, he and dancer Andrea Nann performed to the music of Kage on the taiko (Japanese drum) and classical pianist Alison Nishihara.

“They played experimental, traditional, and contemporary music, and so I worked with them at that time to create a fulllength piece,” he said.

When Onibana Taiko was creating a concept for the 2021 Queer Arts Festival, Tolentino’s name came up. “This is a reunion, in a way,” he said about Kage.

Tolentino and Onibana Taiko will present a dance-and-music performance called Ceremony for Rebel Spirits on August 7. The show starts at 8 p.m. near the Chinese pavilion of Vancouver’s Mountain View Cemetery (5455 Fraser Street).

Tolentino explained that Ceremony for Rebel Spirits will represent the obon, a traditional summer festival in Japan honouring the dead. “The narrative is about this reawakening of the spirits and being with the spirits,” he said about the collaborative work.

The obon is held in Japan during August, and it is believed that the spirits return to visit their loved ones at this time. It is an occasion for family reunions. Customarily, people visit ancestral graves and bring flowers and pray for the dead. Tolentino noted that obon is similar to a cherished tradition in the Philippines called All Saints’ Day, which

As part of the Queer Arts Festival, Co.ERASGA founder Alvin Tolentino will dance at Mountain View Cemetery to honour people who’ve fought against discrimination. Photo by Yasuhiro Okada.

I have always followed my creative instinct.

– Alvin Tolentino

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