By Alexa Mora | April 6, 2019
Last February 19, 2019, the Faculty of Arts and Letters held their annual dance competition called Cypher. This activity was created in order to showcase the talents of the students and their passion for dancing. Cypher was made exclusive for the courses within the Faculty of Arts and Letters that made it an intercollegiate competition. The courses that joined are the following: Asian Studies, Behavioral Science, Communication Arts, Economics, English Language Studies, History, Journalism, Legal Management, Political Science and Sociology.
To make the competition this year more fun and exciting, Cypher decided to revolve around the theme inspired by Filipino Superheroes that each team should incorporate in their routine. Our very own AB Sociology team decided to go with a routine focusing on Panday that was embodied by Vincent Valientes from 1SCL, led by their captain Louella Diego 4SCL while the rest of the story was danced with Vincent and Louella by the following Sociology students: Pamela De Guzman and Criscelle Corpuz of 1SCL, Allyson Bautista, Patricia Antonio, Katrina Sales, Isabel Palmere and Donna Nuevo from 4SCL.
In preparation for the competition, their dance coach Marts Tioseco who is part of TPM or also known as Team Package Makers that is well-known in the Philippine dance industry helped them conceptualize and make the dance come into life. Coach Marts decided to make the story revolve around the idea of introducing who Panday is and how he expresses his selflessness by doing acts of goodness through saving those who are in need. In order for this to be executed properly, discipline and hard work should be presented and according to Vincent Valientes, this was not an easy disposition to acquire. Vincent said and I quote “our first practice was kind of gauging process for our coach to know what the steps we can’t do and what we can do. The rest of the practice days were conditioning and teaching. It’s weird to say that the creative process was on the latter part of our training days, we collaborated on how we would sew all together the choreography and how we can tell a story to the audience.” With all the hard work that the coach experienced in putting all together the piece together and the hard work that the members went through in executing the story of Panday was all worth it given that the in the final scoring, AB Sociology placed 6th out of the 10 contestant. This was very well cherished by team as mentioned by Vincent Valientes “overall, the journey was the important part, we had a hard time with the conditioning and learning the hard steps et we had a good time laughing and smiling with other members and with our coach”. With this, it can be concluded that the Cypher dance competition was successful since the dancers had fun and was contented with the results produced.
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