Wailing Women

Wailing Women is a communing with grief.

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Wailing women is a metaphor for ‘a God who weeps’. In ancient times, these wailing women had a significant and prophetic role; they are a powerful symbol of survival to people coming to terms with tragedy.

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Ea Torrado invokes the spirit of the wailing women in a performance that studies different manifestations of grief. This piece is an homage to the grieving Filipina mothers and widows of the 12,000 (and counting) dead and ‘disappeared’ victims of the current Philippine administration’s ‘war on drugs’. Drawing inspiration from her interviews with these widows and mothers and her own intuitive practice of healing through Reiki and Yoga, Wailing Women probes on death, justice and human dignity.

 

It combines storytelling, chanting and naturalistic movements (pulsating, punching, gyrating, shaking, cringing, wringing, releasing, etc.) to give voice and body to the sensations and sense-making of loss.In the middle of an ongoing war, with thousands of bodies killed and many others still missing, Wailing Women is a ritual of bereavement and release, and an honoring of a profound collective pain.

 

Directed and performed by Ea Torrado, Wailing Women was presented at Pineapple Lab, Makati, Philippines (July 2017), The Goyang International Dance Festival, South Korea (August 2017), The Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church (2017) and Watching the Philippines, Reporting the Duterte Conference at Columbia Journalism School, Columbia University (2017)

 

Photo Credit:  Konrad Ong and Erikcson Dela Cruz