Bailes de Luces 2011
Posted by on January 7, 2011
Last January 5 I flew to Bacolod City then took a two hour bus ride to La Castellana, a southern town in Negros Occidental.
This year, Bailes de Luces held its 13th edition of the festival as a celebration of the town’s founding anniversary.
Unlike other festivals, Bailes de Luces is held at night time for very obvious reasons: It is a festival of lights. The beautiful interplay of lights play a big role in judging the groups. If I am not mistaken the artistic display of lights consists of 40% of the total scores. That’s pretty big. Even bigger than the criteria for Choroegraphy, and costumes.
It was my first time to actually see the Bailes de Luces competition, and I am tuly amazed at the wonderful performances of the schools and Barangays!
The first time I saw Bailes de Luces perform was during the 2009 Panaad sa Negros Festival of Festivals. During that time, I was totally blown away by the group’s performance. Their number landed them on the top spot and earn the Championship Trophy.
Bailes de Luces is now on its 13th year, unfortunately only a few knows of its existence. Not a lot of people outside of Negros are aware that a festival of Lights a beautiful and crazy as this exists in La Castellana.
I am very confident that this festival has a very bright future. I hope that th LGU of La Castellana would further promote Bailes de Luces by joining other competitions like Electric Masskara which is a new attraction during the Masskara Festival (can they actually join there?), BacoLaoDiat, Aliwan Fiesta, among others.
It is high time that people should be aware that a colorful festival exists in Negros occidental.
Until now I still have a hangover of the festivities. I swear, I return to La Castellana this December for the streetdance competition, and on January 5th 2012 for the Arena Competition of Bailes de Luces 2012!
