Sinulog: The Festival and The Dance

EVERY Friday, the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño pulsates with the activity of visiting worshippers and the Sinulog dancers-cum-vendors. These vendors meet the churchgoers at the grounds of this 18th century legacy and ask if they are interested in having the prayer-dance performed in their behalf. After agreeing on the number of candles, the vendor positions herself at the church door and starts lifting her arms, dancing rhythmically with her candle-laden hands upraised in supplication – this is the Sinulog dance.

The dance moves two steps forward and one step backward. This movement resembles the current (sulog) of what was then known as the Pahina River thus, in local dialect, Sinulog. At this festival, the ritual is performed to the beat of the drums in the streets of this oldest city in the Philippines. Thousands of visitors visit Cebu to see this glorious Mardi Gras. It is said that long before Ferdinand Magellan discovered Cebu in 1521 and brought Christianity, the Sinulog dance was already performed by the natives in honor of their wooden idols and anitos. Historians further say that during the 44 years between the coming of Magellan and Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, the natives continued to dance the Sinulog. However, when Legaspi arrived in 1565, the natives were already dancing the Sinulog as a sign of reverence to the Santo Niño which is now enshrined in the basilica. Before 1721, the Fiesta Señor was observed every April 28. On that year, Pope Innocent XIII decreed that the feast be celebrated on the second Sunday of January after the Epiphany, to avoid the season of Lent. The Augustinians highlight the occasion on the day earlier (a Saturday), with a Grand Procession of the miraculous image of the Holy Child in the streets of Cebu city, joined by hundreds of thousands of the faithful. The simple ritual and fiesta inside the basilica grounds every Friday were expanded into an impressive community dance in the 80s a Mardi Gras deserving of the Holy Image. Many artists and chorographers have created several variations to the Sinulog dance but are unanimous in their usage of the Sinulog dance step and beat. When this festival was founded in 1981, in order for it to be distinguished from the Ati-Atihan festival of Aklan, the organizers decided to use the parade to depict the history of the Sinulog which, as has been said, is the dance that links the country’s pagan past and the Christian present.