Abstract:

Without fail, residents of Kalibo the capital town of the province of Aklan in the central Philippines, celebrate with their visitors and guests the Ati-atihan festival every third week of January to honor both the indigenous Atis and the Santo Nino, the Holy Child Jesus. Here Aklanon Patrick Alcedo brings together lives of five participants-disparate in the everyday but interlocked during Ati-atihan through streetdancing and their understandings of dance as prayer and an embodiment of cultural identities.