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Philippines

Folk & Traditional Dances

1 dances
Tinikling
The Philippines' national dance — dancers step between clapping bamboo poles in escalating rhythm.
Why this dance

The escalating rhythm of bamboo poles clapping together imitates the movement of the tikling bird evading bamboo traps set by farmers. The dance is widely understood to have grown out of Spanish colonial-era punishment, when Filipino farm laborers were made to stand between clapping bamboo and beaten if too slow — over time reclaimed as a national dance celebrating agility and endurance rather than the punishment it may have originated from.

Ritual & Ceremonial Dances

0 dances

No ceremonial or ritual dances added here yet.

Why we dance

Every tradition on this map is a branch of something older than writing itself. The oldest paintings we have of humans doing anything at all — at Bhimbetka in India, in cave art in Borneo — already show people dancing. Long before anyone could write a reason down, dance was already binding communities together, marking the passage from childhood to adulthood, and reaching toward whatever each culture understood as sacred.

Read the full essay on the history and philosophy of dance →

Upcoming events in Philippines

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