Brgy. 16, winner of the MassKara Festival Streetdance – Barangay Category Competition
I spent one weekend in Bacolod City gorging on chicken inasal, seeing the old houses in Talisay and Silay, and (of course) watching the Street Competition of the MassKara Festival. It was the first world-renowned Philippine festival that I’ve ever seen. I must admit I wasn’t prepared for the colors and spectacle!
My stakeout was the corner of San Sebastian St. and Araneta Ave., where the streetdance passes through. There was such a huge crowd even with the sun so high up the sky, and with my 18-55mm zoom lens, I really had to jostle among the crowd to get good close-ups. At some point I found myself running to get a good shot of the dancers right before their marshals, pulling ropes, came to rein the crowd away from the dancers. Oh, and I had to contend with the right-after-noontime sun, which made it a little difficult to capture bright photos of the dancers as well.
Nonetheless, it was such a spectacular parade to watch. I was wondering the whole time who designed and created the performers’ costumes, and how the performers themselves were able to dance in such heat. They were probably sweltering inside — but the smiling masks, well, masked whatever they were feeling then. And they looked so amazing, really.
Brgy. 16 also won best in costume
I liked this barangay’s performance quite a lot!
Right after the barangay streetdance came these huge model figures of popular culture icons. They had already been paraded along Lacson St. the night before, during the Electric MassKara parade. Here are a couple I found interesting:
Nicki Minaj
Vice Ganda, a centaur
Filed under: Philippines, Travel Tales Tagged: bacolod city, festival, negros, negros occidental, philippines, travel
