The Offering (Pang Alay)

The Offering (Pang Alay) presents a small glimpse into the relationship between Tau'sug elder Sitti Obeso and dance artist Bhenji Ra. Sitti is a cultural bearer of the Pangalay, a pre-islamic classical dance form Indigenous to the Tau’sug people of the Sulu Archipelago. The two first connected in the province of Lasang, Davao in 2018 when a mutual family member brought them together. Now oceans apart they reconnect via Zoom, communicating at ease by performing Pangalay together when they find themselves stuck between (mis)translations. They discuss Bhenji's tattoo of a kriss (a symbol of sovereignty for the Moro people of the Southern Philippines) as well as Sitti's personal history of the bantot (a word used to describe trans* folk in her hometown). As they dance, we watch their bodies unknot, merge, and respond to one another, witnessing the intimacy and cultural bonds of mentor (Sitti) and student (Bhenji) begin to unfold. Through mimicry and intuitive memory Bhenji follows Sitti's instructions, conversing through a vocabulary of movement that is deeply familial and ancestral.

Aunty holds my arm up as if it’s floating on a seabed. She tells me to mirror her, her body a reflection of mine, my body a reflection of hers. Moving currents slowly form at the tips of my fingers, a tool to read both space and sea. She tells me to soften my focus, remembering this is an offering to receive and be received. An exchange of body and gesture. A diasporic dowry laced with blood memory and a mapping to home (bahay).

If reading comes from shade, then this is pre-Hispanic shade, a deep call to the ballroom girls and oceanic mothers, shared nails, shared hands, shared histories stored in the corner of our bodies, kept for ancestral turn ups and community hall balls.

Three things to remember:
1. Pangalay can be danced anywhere to any music
2. Pangalay dies when we stop dancing it (I sense we die too)
3. Keep elbows above shoulders

For the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, Filipina Australian artist Bhenji Ra engages Tausug Elder and Pangalay master Sitti Obeso from southern Philippines in performative conversation. Bleeding the lines between ocean and land, traditional and contemporary, the original and the diasporic body, this exchange between teacher and student is a generous sharing of a relationship sustained by periodical visits to home country, the sharing of personal ephemera, and online messages across the Pacific Ocean. This performance lecture offers an alternative mode of cultural pedagogy that avoids reductive notions around performing culture and learning repertoire.