Sinulog Festival

	Sinulog Festival
	Cebu Philippines
	Mardi Gras in the Philippines?
Sinulog Festival attracts tourists from all over the Philippines and the world each year. It is held on the 3rd Sunday of January each year. 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 resembles the current (Sulog) of what was known as Cebu's Pahina River. Thus, in Cebuano, they say it's Sinulog.


The sinulog is the most visible and most attended of the fiesta performing expressions. This street drama performance showcases in dance and mime the battle between San Miguel and Lusbel (Lucifer), as narrated in catechetical legend. The sinulog is performed along the overcrowded avenues and side-streets of Iligan and in all sense presents the triumph of the good over evil.

Sinulog dance is based on the movement of the river current, hence the dancers move with wave-like movement. People converge along the route of a grand procession and partake in the gaiety amidst a Mardi Gras parade and immersed in wild colors and the constant beating of drums to the yells of "Pit Senor!"

Today, the January festivals of the Visaya section of the Philippines all pay homage to the Santo Niño -- an image of the Christ Child given by Magellan to the newly baptized chief of a Cebu tribe in April of 1521. Two weeks later, Magellan was killed in fighting on the island and his men fled, returning to Spain.

It was 44 years before the people of Cebu received further instruction on the practice of Christianity. Miguel Lopez de Legaspi arrived in Cebu on April 28, 1565 to find that the locals had place the Santo Niño besides their other gods and did homage to them all each year in the Sinulog. The celebration was Christianized and the other gods disappeared... The festival in Cebu is called Sinulog today.

Cebu's "Sinulog" is a cornucopia of movement, sound, color, and pageantry. This festival traces its roots to a fervent attachment to the image by many of Cebu's inhabitants; the ritual dance evolved from the elders' rhytmic movements while praying at the image's sanctuary, a beautiful church edifice near Cebu's waterfront. The merrymaking draws believers and unbelievers alike. Thus, there is something for everyone: a pilgrimmage that is joined by thousands of faithful.
Before 1980, Sinulog was just a religious ritual. It was performed inside the San Agustin Church (since renamed Basilica Minore del Santo Niño) - mostly by old women who held one candle in each hand as they did the patterned forward-backward dance of the Sinulog. A small drum sounded out a beat nearby. The dance, in its pagan origins, was designed to mimic the flow of the current of Cebu’s Pahina River. And the Cebuano word of "current" is used to form the festival's name.
In 1980, with the example of the successful festivals in neighboring Panay, city leaders organized the first ever Sinulog parade. In 1981, it became a full festival. The festival's parade is usually a history presentation which shows the links between the island's pagan past and its Christian present. Seven floats were created to depict seven different periods of history. Dancers wear costumes depicting the periods. The Sinulog has become one of the country's biggest spectacle -- less rowdy, perhaps, than the festivals of nearby Panay, but with better facilities and accommodations for foreign guests.