Potri Ranka Manis
Potri is an award-winning poet, playwright, performer, and the founder and director of Kinding Sindaw, a NYC-based non-profit dance theater company. Kinding Sindaw exists to assert, preserve, reclaim, and re-create the traditions of dance, music, martial arts, storytelling, and orature of the indigenous peoples of Mindanao, Southern Philippines.
Tell us about Kinding Sindaw
Kinding means graceful movement or dance, and sindaw is to light, to spark a light. So through our dances and our storytelling and our gong music, we'd like to shed light on the real story of the indigenous people from our own narrative. It's mostly still in the oral tradition. And there is so much of our history that is not told by us.
The tradition and culture and arts that I am carrying here in the U.S. is a living tradition from the indigenous people of Mindanao.
Kinding Sindaw by Joseph PinlacAsian American Arts Alliance
What is the mission of Kinding Sindaw - what are you hoping to accomplish?
These are stories that will just become a missing link of mankind if they are not told, if that narrative is not told by the indigenous people ourselves. These dances are sacred. These dances tell our story, our rituals, our birthing ritual, our water fetching ritual, our rice planting ritual. These are the meanings of these dances. That is my concept and my only way of asserting our own story and reclaiming that story.
So that is our mission as Kinding Sindaw, to reclaim, assert, preserve, and recreate meaning, and remount it on stage with sanctity.
Kinding Sindaw by Corky LeeAsian American Arts Alliance
How has A4 been a part of Kinding Sindaw’s story?
Corky (Lee, one of A4’s founders) really believed in our mission. And he said, "You should be part of A4, the Asian American Arts Alliance." So our first funding was from the Asian American Arts Alliance. And A4 affirmed us, affirmed the concept of Kinding Sindaw, that it has to drive and grow and become an agent of change, an agent of that narrative, and it is an entity that will hold a living tradition that will not become extinct. And that's how meaningful A4 is to us.”
Kinding Sindaw is about a large membership, especially the young. Whatever we're doing is not only necessary, it's like a lifeline by itself.
A4 presents us or connects us with different possibilities to become part of the showcase as an Asian group. A4 really projected us, projected Kinding Sindaw as a legitimate group, as a group that carries legends, epics, and myths, and narratives of the Indigenous people. And of course, there's always food attached to that, right? Every time there's a meeting, there's good food. Now that's what being Asians are. Food is always part of that.
Kinding Sindaw by Corky LeeAsian American Arts Alliance
To learn more about Kinding Sindaw or to support their efforts, click here;
https://www.kindingsindaw.org/
