Bryan Levina Viray

The Australian National University, Center for Heritage and Museum Studies, PhD candidate

Followers

469

Following

265

Co-authors

Public Views

I am a PhD candidate at the Australian National University’s (ANU) Research School of Humanities and the Arts, supported by the University Research Scholarship (URS). I served as an Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of the Philippines Diliman (2013-2024). The University of the Philippines recognised my artistic achievements by conferring upon me the UP Artist 1 award (2020-2022) as part of its Arts Productivity System.

In 2024, I joined the ANU’s Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies as a casual sessional academic. Additionally, I contributed to the TRaCE Transborder project, a global and cross-institutional initiative led by McGill University and hosted by several universities including the ANU. I was a 2023-2024 Bordin/Gillette Fellow at the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library, where I conducted archival research. Also, I held a Visiting Research Fellowship at Marinduque State University’s Sentro ng Wika at Kultura (SWK) and Office of Media and International Affairs (OMIA) from July to September 2022. Hailing from Boac, Marinduque, in the Philippines, I draw upon my cultural heritage to inform my research and academic pursuits. My research interests include critical heritage studies, theatre and performance studies, ethnochoreology, anthropology of dance, arts management, cultural policy and administration.
Supervisors: Professor Laurajane Smith (main); Dr Kate Bowan (associate); Professor Ma. Mercedes Planta (associate)

less

InterestsView All (6)

Uploads

Papers by Bryan Levina Viray

Dissonance in the national cultural heritage policy of the Philippines

International Journal of Cultural Policy, 2025

This article investigates the gaps and problems in heritage policymaking in the Philippines. It e... more This article investigates the gaps and problems in heritage policymaking in the Philippines. It examines how national heritage, as encoded in the 2009 National Cultural Heritage Act (Republic Act No. 10066) and enacted in practice, yields unintended dissonant consequences. It argues that heritage management in the Philippines aligns with the UNESCO World Heritage Convention and has been shaped by the dominance of the Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) – an international heritage discourse that prioritises tangible, scientific, and nationally defined values. This approach has generated friction with local communities and stakeholders, whose understandings of heritage often emphasise lived practices, oral traditions, and place-based meanings. However, the dissonance between the AHD and local realities has also prompted shifts within national policy, making it more responsive to intangible cultural heritage. By examining these tensions – both between national and local actors and within state institutions – the article reveals how official heritage discourse is being reshaped in practice.

Download

From revolution to figuration

The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics, 2019

Greeting the Virgin Mary: The Dancerly Attitudes of the Bati in Salubong

The Journal of English Studies, 2019

Download

Where is the Crown?: Dancing the Putong / Tubong on Stage

Philippine Humanities Review, 2017

Download

Troubling the Training: A Reflexive Dialogue on Decolonizing Performance Pedagogies in the Philippines and Malaysia

Global Performance Studies

Troubling the Training: A Reflexive Dialogue on Decolonizing Performance Pedagogies in the Philippines and Malaysia

Global Performance Studies, 2022

Where should we begin a dialogue about decolonizing and reimagining performance pedagogies in the... more Where should we begin a dialogue about decolonizing and reimagining performance pedagogies in the Southeast Asian context? We first met when we were completing the Choreomundus International MA in Dance Knowledge, Practice, and Heritage in Europe and we are now pursuing our PhD degrees in Australia and Canada. Our dialogue opens by offering a contextualization of land grabbing and the exploitation of resources in the Philippines before delving into the relationship between land and body through careful reflection on our own bodily training. We are convinced that violence against land and body can be undone only through Indigenous sovereignty, by mobilizing the intergenerational knowledge that resides in Indigenous bodies. Decolonizing pedagogies enable an unlearning of the ways in which colonialism has been written on bodies. Integration as a decolonial method is not only about integrating performance elements, but is also about shifting towards a pedagogy of performance that empowers the Indigenous, minorities, and the marginalized, and integrates their clamor for land, social justice, and equity in the process of recreating cultural performances. By situating our personal journeys within the social and political contexts of our home countries and of the countries in which we have been educated, we hope that this dialogue offers an intimate consideration of what non-Indigenous and postcolonial scholars can contribute to the conversation around decolonizing performance pedagogies. [ See GPS, Vol. 5, 1-2 (2022) Special Double Issue at https://gps.psi-web.org/issue/view/9 ]

Download

Bodies and/in Performance Research

UP-Date Magazine, 2017

In this essay, I introduce the body as a performance through tradition and dance, focusing on the... more

Download

Politics of Intervention in the Tubong Tradition of Marinduque

Theatres and Politics Today / Comunicazioni Sociali: Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural Studies, 2021

The tubong is a complex form of creative expression in Marinduque, Philippines. The practice of ... more The tubong is a complex form of creative expression in Marinduque, Philippines. The practice of the ritual is almost quotidian as the locals have made it the main act of their significant social gatherings. The essay interrogates the development of the tubong as a cultural performance based on various shifts and turns. The essay is historical, but the focus and aim is to point out the politics of intervention in the practices and its continuous reinventions. As the tubong developed from a ritual of healing, to its welcoming and entertainment function, including the formation of Junior Putong and the creation of millennial putong, the essay focuses on traditionalization or the creative strategies of individuals, small groups, and institutions in Marinduque. In the final analysis, I argue that millennialization of tubong is a progressive turn, and should be enacted with criticality. This means that the putong repertoire’s meaning, cultural values, and societal functions should remain or persist, even though the embodiment differs or changes across time and generations. Networks of power and political interveners as cultural agents will always be present because of the primary reason to keep and continue the practice of tubong tradition, at different times and in varying contexts.

Selected Bibliography:

C. S. Chan, “Folklore Without a Folk: Questions in the Preservation of the Marinduque Moriones Heritage”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 23, 1 (2017): 29-40. Accessed May 31, 2021. https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/91788543/Folklore_without_a_Folk.pdf.

A. Eriksen, “Our Lady of Perpetual Help: Invented Tradition and Devotional Success”, Journal of Folklore Research, 42, 3 (2005): 295-321 (298).

P. D. Flores, “Teaching/Learning the Humanities in Other Words/Worlds”, Art and Society, edited by F. M. Datuin, Quezon City, Philippines: Department of Art Studies, College of Arts and Letters, University of the Philippines Diliman, 1997: 11-28 (19).

N. H. H. Graburn, “What is Tradition”, Museum Anthropology, 24, 2/3, (2001): 6-11 (6).

C. J. Paz, “Ginhawa: Well-being as Expressed in Philippines Languages”, in Ginhawa, Kapalaran, Dalamhati: Essays on Well-Being, Opportunity/Destiny, and Anguish, edited by C. J. Paz, Diliman, Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2008: 3-12.

M. F. A. Santos, “Philippine Folk Dances: A Story of a Nation”, Journal of English Studies and Comparative Literature, 18, 1 (2019): 1-38. Accessed May 3, 2021. https://www.journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/jescl/article/view/6884.

R. Schechner, Between Theater and Anthropology, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1985.

D. Taylor, “Acts of Transfer”, in The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003: 3.

S. A. P. Tiatco, “Panata, Pagtitipon, Pagdiriwang: A Preliminary Contextualization of Cultural Performances in the Philippines”, Humanities Diliman, 16, 1 (2019): 54-81 (73). Accessed June 25, 2021.

B. L. Viray, “Where is the Crown?: Dancing the Putong/Tubong on Stage”, Philippine Humanities Review, 18, 1, (2016): 138-163. Accessed June 3, 2021. https://journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/phr/article/view/5704.

Tubong/Putong in Marinduque as a Ritual-Dance of Healing, Thanksgiving, and Veneration

As a preliminary project using the disciplines of anthropology, ritual, and dance, this paper inv... more As a preliminary project using the disciplines of anthropology, ritual, and dance, this paper investigates the coronation ritual tubong/putong practiced in Marinduque, Philippines. I build my methodological inquiry through the existing Philippine dance research methods borrowed from ethnochoreology and anthropology. In exploring tubong as a ritual-dance of healing, thanksgiving, and veneration, I employ Kaeppler’s kinemic analysis and Ness’ “choreographic experience”. In this paper, I argue for movement knowledge competence because rituals, movement practices, dance traditions, or whatever term is possible, are part and parcel of indigenous knowledge and local traditions. In this case, I suggest that the tubong ritual-dance carries a particular set of movement and dance knowledge. Consequently, the incorporation of ethnochoreology (i.e., movement analysis) and anthropology in the study of dance, choreography and movement practice is an emergent need in Philippine dance scholarship.

Download

The Philippine Performance Archive on Cultural Performances: Archive as Performative Cultural Memory and Pedagogy

by Bryan Levina Viray and Jem Javier

Digital Humanities and New Ways of Teaching

The essay is a general overview of the Philippine Performance Archive on Cultural Performances. T... more The essay is a general overview of the Philippine Performance Archive on Cultural Performances. The first part is an introduction and a presentation of the archival project with emphasis on the concept of cultural performance, concretized within performance studies paradigm using Philippine society and culture as context. The second part is a discussion of how data in the archive were documented and collected using focused ethnography as primary methodology. The method is argued to be the distinguishing mark of the project from other digital archives. Also, this section provides a detailed exposition about the significance of understanding local performance vocabularies and how these terms are translated into the archive through semantic framing. In the end, it is asserted that the Philippine Performance Archive on Cultural Performances functions not only as a repository of resource materials on the study of Philippine cultural performances but also as a performative cultural memory and a pedagogical tool.

Performing Human Rights: Pista Rizalina’s Interrogations of Martial Law, Extra-Judicial Killings and Historical Revisionsm at the Cultural Center of the Philippines

by Bryan Levina Viray and Anril Tiatco

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

The essay inquires a general question: what is the relationship of theater and human rights? A pr... more The essay inquires a general question: what is the relationship of theater and human rights? A preliminary reflection is provided using the different activities staged at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) on the occasion of Pista Rizalina (Fiesta Rizalina) in September 2017. The festival was named after Rizalina Ilagan, a student activist-artist abducted by the military during the Martial Law era under President Ferdinand E. Marcos. To date, Ilagan's body has not been found. The festival is a commemoration of the victims of human rights violations encountered by thousands of Filipinos since the Martial Law era of Marcos. In the end, it is argued that performing human rights at the CCP is a tool to transmit traumatic experiences for the understanding of those who did not suffer violence, oppression and tyranny (i.e. today's younger generation). The relationship of theatre and human rights is asserted to be a rehearsal for a community where the other is encountered with care and responsibility.

Download

Greeting the Virgin Mary: The Dancerly Attitudes of the Bati in Salubong

Journal of English and Comparative Literature Vol 18, No. 1, 2019

The essay inquires how the narratives of devotion to the Virgin Mary heavily influence the choreo... more The essay inquires how the narratives of devotion to the Virgin Mary heavily influence the choreographies and compositions of the bati (greeting) dance in salubong in Marinduque and Angono, Philippines. The salubong is a re-enactment of the first meeting of Jesus Christ and his sorrowful mother popularly known as Mater Dolorosa after his death on the cross. The dancers greet and wave flags for the Virgin Mary to signify the transformation of her sorrow to joy as the angels sing alleluia. The essay also highlights dancerly attitude as a potential framework and source of a grounded movement analysis focusing on the intertwined attitudes – the bodily attitudes, affective, spatial, and the physical dimensions of dance and dancing. The bati as dance movement, conditioned and presupposed by the religious Marian devotion, and that is conceived as contradictory in the everyday flow, is experienced by the dancers themselves as unnatural or dancerly.

Download

Where is the Crown?: Dancing the Putong/Tubong on Stage

Philippine Humanities Review Vol 18, No 1, 2016

The Putong/Tubong as ritual represents a complex form of expressive behaviour in which chant, mus... more The Putong/Tubong as ritual represents a complex form of expressive behaviour in which chant, music, poetry, magical act, and dance movement are entangled in signi cant social events. In Turnerian sense, these social events are “rite of passage” where the punsyon (honouree, celebrant) is crowned by the manunubongs (ritual initiators) with the visitors (Turner 1969). All participate in and witness the socio- cultural meanings embedded in its enactment – healing, veneration, and thanksgiving (Viray 2015b). As a product of nationwide field dance research and documentation, National Artist for Dance Francisca Reyes-Aquino with composer Antonino Buenaventura included the Putong/Tubong in a collection of folk dance and music notation, Philippine Folk Dances Volume 1 (1953, 1996). As a result, the Tubong as a ritual has been included in the folk and traditional staged dance repertoire in the Philippines and abroad. This article investigates how dance companies like the PASACAT Philippine Performing Arts Company (San Diego, California) have translated the crown (Putong/Tubong) ritual into a staged choreography. The first section presents the “structural units” of Putungan based on the company’s filmed dance taken from Youtube (Giurchescu and Krӧschlová 2007:22-23). The succeeding section relates the staged choreography or “a dance realization” with reference to its original ritualistic contexts and social function or “dance concept” (Bakka and Karoblis, 2010:172-173). Then finally, the essay argues that the most signicant motif (both in dance concept and realization dimensions) in the Putong/Tubong ritual has vanished, specifically, the sense of touch during the coronation section through which the participative element is enacted. This core movement motif is also essential in that the ritual’s space (i.e. proximity) is shared among the punsyon, the manunubongs, and the visitors. While the essay articulates how meaning and important nuances of the ritual are lost, the last section juxtaposes the choreographic choices of the company with the manunubongs’, the cultural-bearers, in order to unfold decision-making process in staging a ritual and/ or folk dance. Through this analysis, the article aims to engage dance artists and practitioners in an anthropological contemplation.

Download

TUBONG/PUTONG IN MARINDUQUE AS A RITUAL-DANCE OF HEALING, THANKSGIVING, AND VENERATION

AGHAM-TAO VOL. 24, 2015

As a preliminary project using the disciplines of anthropology, ritual, and dance, this paper inv... more As a preliminary project using the disciplines of anthropology, ritual, and dance, this paper investigates the coronation ritual tubong/putong practiced in Marinduque, Philippines. I build my methodological inquiry through the existing Philippine dance research methods borrowed from ethnochoreology and anthropology. In exploring tubong as a ritual-dance of healing, thanksgiving, and veneration, I employ Kaeppler's kinemic analysis and Ness' "choreographic experience". In this paper, I argue for movement knowledge competence because rituals, movement practices, dance traditions, or whatever term is possible, are part and parcel of indigenous knowledge and local traditions. In this case, I suggest that the tubong ritual-dance carries a particular set of movement and dance knowledge. Consequently, the incorporation of ethnochoreology (i.e., movement analysis) and anthropology in the study of dance, choreography and movement practice is an emergent need in Philippine dance scholarship.

Download

"The Tasaday, The Lost Tribe" (Thames Production, 1987): A Reflection

Download

Palabas ng Patrimoni (draft)

An introspection of my 6-day ethnography in Ifugao and Mt. Province, Philippines

Download

Sipat-Tanaw_sa_pabasa_ng_pasyon

Bryan L. Viray Sipat-Tanaw sa pabasa ng pasyon sa pook Krus na Ligas MA Anthropology Sipat-Tanaw ... more Bryan L. Viray Sipat-Tanaw sa pabasa ng pasyon sa pook Krus na Ligas MA Anthropology Sipat-Tanaw sa pabasa ng pasyon sa pook Krus na Ligas Indibidwal at Kultura Nàsa ng aking maikling papel na makapag-ambag sa usapin ng culture-making na nakatuon sa ahensya o indibidwal. Kung paanong ang konstruksyon ng mga kultura (cultures) ay apektado ng tao at lipunan. Kung anu-ano ang proseso ng pagbabagong nagaganap sa bawat kultura. At mula sa pagbabago o muling pag-imbento nito ay paanong tinatanggap o tinatanggihan ito ng nakasanayang sistema. Samakatuwid, inspirasyon ng papel ang kultura bilang adaptive, emergent, at self-generating. "People may not consciously plan their culture, but they do confront problems of living on a daily basis, " ayon kay Richard J. Perry (2003). Patunay ito na ang mga nabuong kultura na nabalisa sa paglipas ng panahon ay bukas na bukas sa kung ano pa mang muling pagbubuo na umaangkla sa pagbabagong panahon. Idagdag pa, "…culture is certainly the creation of human beings." (Perry 2003). Sa gayon, interesado ang aking pagaaral sa pagsumpong kung ano ang papel na gampanin ng indibidwal sa konstruksyong ito ng kultura. Paano sila gumagalaw? May talaban ba halimbawa sa pagitan ng nakasanayan na o dating nabuong kultura at papasibol na sistema? Paano ang porma ng talaban o kaya aktuwalidad ng negosasyon? Sa mga kataga halimbawa ni Gregory Bateson, paanong ang mga indibidwal ay nagiging "energy sources" upang makapagdulot ng karaniwang ugoy o dili kaya"y galaw ng kultura. Bryan L. Viray Sipat-Tanaw sa pabasa ng pasyon sa pook Krus na Ligas MA Anthropology

Download

Talks by Bryan Levina Viray

Case of Emergency: Emergent Writings on Live Art and Performance

This is part of a conversation between Choreomundus Master students Cohort 2013-2015 and artists ... more This is part of a conversation between Choreomundus Master students Cohort 2013-2015 and artists who participated in a performance festival, Case of Emergency: Emergent Writings on Live Art and Performance, at the University of the Arts Helsinki in 2015. The festival programme was edited by Frankovich, D., Gullichsen, H.M., Von Nissinen, V., and D.S. Hernandez.

Download

Bryan Levina Viray

Uploads

Papers by Bryan Levina Viray

Talks by Bryan Levina Viray

Log In