St Joseph’s Church, Garden Road, Central celebrated the Feast of the Santo Niño on January 26 with a Sinulog dance held in the church’s spacious car park.
Despite the intermittent drizzle of the day, the 140 performers from the Legion of Mary, Sower’s Community, Apostleship of Prayer, Filipino Catholic Group, Filipino Prayer Group, Sons and Daughters of the Black Nazarene, dressed in red, braved the cold weather and danced to the delight of the crowd. Queen Juana was portrayed by Renea Poblete of the Legion of Mary.
The performances took place in five shows, starting with the first at 11:00am, followed by the second at 12:30pm and the third at 2:00pm. A prayer to Santo Niño was recited in the grotto, led by the Filipino Catholic group. At 3:30pm, the dancers gathered again in the car park for their fourth showdown, with the fifth and final performance at 5:00pm. The dances were performed after each Mass.
Evelyn Pontilar Dumaran, the choreographer of the event, has been a member of the Sto. Niño Dancers Group of Saint Joseph’s Church since 2015 and has been teaching the dance since then. Talking about her experience as a choreographer, she said that the length of the practice varies because sometimes it is not done on consecutive Sundays. For this year’s practice, it took more or less two months. Every year new dancers join and this year a third of the dancers were new. Every one made their wishes as the queen carrying the image began to move. This is also the signal for the dancers to join in for the dance.
The history of Sinulog can be traced back to 1521 when the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan arrived in Cebu. It was at this time that Queen Juana, wife of the local chief Rajah Humabon, is said to have received the iconic image of the Santo Niño (Child Jesus) as a gift for her baptism. Later, the king’s advisor began dancing in joy after the Santo Niño supposedly cured him.
The Sinulog Festival is an annual cultural and religious festival held on the third Sunday of January in Cebu, and is the centre of the Santo Niño Christian celebrations in the Philippines. SE
