Parangal Dance Co. to perform in Japan’s Hakodate folk art festival

Members of Parangal Dance Company from San Francisco Bay Area. CONTRIBUTED

HOKKAIDO, Japan – Parangal Dance Company is on one of several tours slated this year, this time to join the Hakodate International Folk Art Festival.

The company will perform indigenous dances from the Kalinga, Meranao, Maguindanao, Ta’u Sug and Yakan tribes, which it visited on immersion trips to get inspiration for their performances.

This current tour is made possible with the help of a grant from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, which generously funds artists that foster international cultural exchanges. The foundation released a total of 48 grants this year, including Parangal Dance Company’s.

Parangal Dance will be performing in Hakodate, Japan. CONTRIBUTED

The Hakodate International Folk Art Festival is a large summer festival that boasts the largest folk art field in Japan. Artists from several countries will be staying in Hakodate and holding various performances and workshops in different outdoor stages.

The festival has been around since 2008 and over 2,000 participating artists from over 50 countries every year. Aside from Parangal Dance Company, the festival will present artists from Slovakia, Lithuania, Argentina, Russia, Ecuador, Algeria and several groups from different parts of Japan.

Parangal Dance Company is restaging several works from different tenured Philippine Dance groups such as Bayanihan Dance Company, Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group, SalaMindanao Dance Troupe, Leyte Dance Troupe and other smaller communities that have shown the company various indigenous inspired dances from all over the Philippines.

Festival dates are from August 5-11 at the Motomachi Park in Hakodate.

To see festival schedule, click on this link: https://wmdf.org/en/event.html. To learn more about the Hakodate International Folk Art festival click on this link:

https://wmdf.org/en/ and to learn more about Parangal Dance Company, click on this link: www.parangal.org.