Joy of Dancing

  Tinikling Dance In my last blog I wrote about a magical bamboo dance of the north eastern state of Mizoram called Cheraw. In Philippines there is a similar bamboo dance called Tinikling. Tinikling is a traditional folk dance of the Philippines which originated in Leyte, one of the Visayan Islands during the Spanish colonial eras. According to legend, this dance was started by the people who worked in the paddies and farms of the Philippines. When the Spaniards conquered the Philippines, the natives were sent to ‘haciendas’ (plantation, factories or mines) and lost control of their land. To please the king of Spain, the natives had to work all day. Those who worked too slowly would be sent for punishment, in which the worker had to stand between two bamboo poles which were then clapped to beat the natives’ feet. To escape their punishments, the natives jumped around the poles and from this action, Tinikling dance originated. Tinikling is now the national dance of Philippines. Th...