sugar vendil

ISLANDER is a music and movement suite. From the lens of a second generation Filipinx American, the work examines the residue colonialism has left behind through a reflection of folklore, history, and personal experience, and explores the tension, fragmentation, and loss that exists within one’s identity. The ancestral sarunay and loom are counterpointed by the piano, various keyboards, and electronics. Vendil’s longtime collaborator, composer Trevor Gureckis, will design additional electronic elements.

Islander has been supported by residencies at Arts Letters & Numbers, National Sawdust Summer Labs, and a work in progress showing at Dixon Place.

The current iteration will feature Sugar Vendil, Cynthia Alberto, Melinda Faylor, and Laura Snell.

A longer excerpt can be found here.

Pearls references World War 2 and the United States in the Philippines. The lyrics “I shall return” are General MacArthur’s famous words to the Filipinos before he and his family fled. Pearls, worn by the performers, attached to the parachutes thrown in the air, sitting in cans of SPAM on the table, are a reference to the phrase “pearls of the orient.” The embedding of Western beauty standards is evoked later, starting with a recording of Imelda Marcos (both a symbol of beauty and betrayal in the Philippines) lying about writing Irving Berlin’s song, "“Heaven Watch the Philippines,” ending with the women opening and closing the parasols using the same movement as the opening military march section.