SINULOG FESTIVAL 2006

The biggest festival on the island of Cebu, the oldest city in the country, is the Sinulog Festival. The festivities provide a break in the everyday quiet in the place also known as the Queen City of the South.

Costumes of feather, silk, and bright colors are worn by revelers who also don masks and carry horns during a Grand Parade. The Sinulog Sunday (third in January--the 15th this year) sees townsfolk converging at noon and getting ready for a procession wherein devotees chorus "Pit Señor" ("Long live the Christ Child") to incessant drum beats.

Sinulog is a dance ritual in honor of the miraculous image of the Santo Niño. The dance moves two steps forward and one step backward to the sound of the drums. This movement is like that of a current (sulog), resembling the water eddies of Cebu's old Pahina River.

For the duration of the festival, elderly women dance with sinuous movements, as if forming a human wave. They can be seen doing this dance in the early morning at Magellan's Cross and the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño. But the swinging hips are not only done by grannies, but also grandfathers, sons, daughters, and children during the procession.

The Sinulog dance is significant for, as historians say, it is the link between the country's pagan past and its Christian present.According to historical accounts, Sinulog was already being danced by the natives in honor of anitos, way before Portuguese navigators came to Cebu and claimed the country in the name of Spain's king. When Magellan introduced Christianity, he gave the Santo Niño to Rajah Humabon's wife, Hara Amihan, who would later become Queen Juana.

Through the years, the dance grew from a small pagan ritual to being central to Cebu's biggest and most popular festival. In 1980, it was institutionalized with the first ever Sinulog parade wherein a group of students were gathered and made to dress up. The Sinulog organization eventually came into being, and the first task of the organizing committee was to conceptualize the festival and make it the big spectacle it is now, and for which Cebu becomes a top tourist destination every January.

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