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• Materializing Devotion: Exploring Identity Negotiation in Parañaque City’s Sayaw ng Pagbati

  123-136

  Jose Antonio Lorenzo Tamayo

  Views:

  100

  Catholics in several Southern Tagalog towns in the Philippines express the joy of Christ’s resurrection through a ritual dance called Sayaw ng Pagbati (Dance of Greeting). In Parañaque City, children in elaborate costumes and holding flags perform the dance ritual in the cathedral early Easter Sunday morning and in their corresponding neighborhoods throughout the day. This study intends to frame the Easter dance through material culture by exploring how ritual objects relate to both performers and the community. Using a qualitative research design, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 respondents and unstructured observation of the ritual dance in San Dionisio, Parañaque. The study identifies that ritual objects in the Easter dance mediate and materialize the sacred and entangle both performers and the community in networks of obligation, reception, and identity. As prestige goods, ritual objects function as social markers for the performers and their families.

• Sayaw Ng Bati: The System Of Easter Dance Sponsorship In Angono, Rizal, The Philippines

  187-199

  Jose Antonio Lorenzo Tamayo

  Views:

  350

  The brand of Catholicism that exists in the Philippines blends both Christian and folk traditions. During the precolonial period, sponsoring community rituals was obligatory for the datu (chieftain) and the local aristocracy, as these events consumed significant resources. The Christianization of the country through Spanish colonization transformed precolonial sponsorship traditions as new sponsorship practices emerged among the local elites, aligning them with the veneration of the santo (images of saints) and the fiesta (the feast of the town’s patron saint). This article explores a distinct Catholic sponsorship system in the Southern Tagalog region called sayaw ng bati or bati, a dance ritual performed in Angono, Rizal, during Easter. Based on in-depth interviews conducted with three performers, the article provided an overview of bati as a sponsorship system, focusing on the process of becoming a performer and the corresponding motivations, the material and economic aspects of the practice, and the positioning of bati within the context of panata (devotional pledge).