Angelo Aurelio has come to terms with his healing, transforming his personal journey into powerful public art.
The director, actor, painter, and poet, once known for his fierce talent and intensity has been living with Nasopharyngeal Cancer. Since 2021, Aurelio chose to step off the grid to a secluded family farm, focusing entirely on therapy and the brutal five-cycle chemotherapy and 40-day radiation required for his recovery.
His official return to the public eye was highlighted by a politically charged performance on October 26 at the Baguio City Public Market, a testament that he can, and will, dance again.
Aurelio said “This performance for the market was long time coming, to create such performance, the dance form is a fusion of physical theater, performance art, mime, and strong influences of Kabuki and Butoh, I haven’t danced like this in a while, I thought I won’t be able to, releasing a seismic event is not an easy assignment. Either you align yourself with the rhythm, or get out of the way.”
The market performance was done the midst of protests against the Baguio Public Market privatization and mallification where stakeholders, artists, business community representatives, residents, and advocates gathered for an afternoon of performances and discourse.
Aurelio performance is for the working class “This dance is a seismic event, calibrated to the frequency of the working class. I don’t wear costumes and dance for tourists. I ritual perform FOR and WITH my people. I unleash what resonates with the heart of the commons. Real, every day, non-cartoon characters’ energies, fighting real monsters of corruption.
Works of Aurelio focused on the city with one of his projects, a film documentary, was focused on the July 16, 1990 earthquake, “Writing Thirty” filming survivors of the killer quake.
Aurelio also finished a mural of the country’s national heroes, the “The Bayani Matrix Project,” showing the faces of Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Emilio Aguinaldo, Apolinario Mabini, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Sultan Dipatuan Kudarat, Juan Luna, Melchora Aquino, and Gabriela Silang.
Aurelio said he stopped dance and theater workshops while healing from cancer, but added “When the time calls for you to dance, you dance. That’s the essence of being a creative for the people, to disrupt what is rather destructive and self-serving.”
As well as the 2020 Anido mural at the Baguio Convention Center, set up in homage to healing during the confusion of the pandemic.
The market performance was dedicated to his grandparents “Mommy Bising and Daddy Bikong were both restaurant cooks for 50 years, in Wagon Wheels, Chaparral, and NapNaps, the Market for us is deeply connected to our lives. As well as for painter, Vince Navarro, a palenke boy who dreamed to paint while sleeping on the pushcarts of Kayang. For the ecobag children and all the “Lumalaban ng Patas. At kumikita ng malinis sa Palenkeng napabayaan at madungis.”
Healing from cancer and fighting for an advocacy is the perfect comeback for Aurelio, making his journey go full circle. By Maria Elena Catajan
