“Alaya is the summit to ignite the creativity in you through artistic performance, research, and humanistic practices. With the aspiration to share one’s passion (alay) and liberate one’s thoughts and emotions (laya) in various art forms, Alaya is where the inception of the next generation’s artist-scholar and artist-educator begins.”�?
Conference 2023 Theme:
3RD GMC ALAYA: “WEAVING THE PERFORMING ARTS AND HUMANISTIC BUDDHISM THROUGH LIVENESS AND EPHEMERALITY”
The 3rd edition of Alaya, the 3-day conference is anchored on Guang Ming College’s (GMC) mission to teach performing arts and humanism to Filipinos from diverse regions across the country. A performing arts school with the largest student population in dance and theater, GMC is an intersection of different cultural practices, traditions, ideas and talent honed by scholars and arts practitioners in the industry.�?
Vital in arts education is a humanist lens to pedagogy that GMC upholds. In the way that arts have the capacity to initiate and inspire social transformation for a better world through its potential to reimagine and recreate.�?
Schedule
Workshop Program
May 24 - 26
Cultural Program
May 24 - 26
Partners
Keynote Speakers
Michael L. Tan, DVM, PhD
- Dr. Michael L. Tan is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at University of the Philippines, Diliman (UPD), an elected academician of the National Academy of Science and Technology, and currently the President of Guang Ming College. After serving as Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy at UPD, he was appointed Chancellor for UPD from 2014 to 2020. As a Medical Anthropologist his published single author books include Thinking, Doing Culture (2011) by UST Press; Revisiting Usog, Pasma, Kulam (2008) by UP Press, and Good Medicine: Pharmaceuticals and the Construction of POwer and Knowledge in the Philippines (1999) by University of Amsterdam. His Pinoy Kasi column for the Philippine Daily Inquirer started in 1997 and continues today.�?
Marjorie Evasco, PhD
- Every person is born with a seed of a talent, but this seed begins as a potential gift. In the process of the person’s maturation, s/he can grow to discover that s/he embodies a talent. The one who honors its presence by cultivating it to near-perfection in order to keep the gift alive and able to enliven the heart of consciousness in others is the one who becomes an artist. Humanistic Buddhism nourishes the artist’s heart-mind-body to practice her/his gift, driven by the high purpose of thinking thoughts, saying words, and doing deeds that can bestow goodness in this world. The artist-scholar’s offering, Alay, is the best articulation of her/his gift, whether in art-practice or in art-practice research. This offering is given to the community in the liberative spirit of freedom, Laya, so that it becomes part of the wealth of humanity’s Alaya or storehouse of collective consciousness.�?
Sir Anril Tiatco, PhD
- Dr. Sir Anril Tiatco earned his PhD in Theatre Studies from the National University of Singapore. He was a visiting scholar at the Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures, the University of Manchester (2012 - 2013). His essays have appeared in Journal of Homosexuality, Tourism Management Perspectives, Asian Theatre Journal, TDR: The Drama Review, JATI: Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Kritika Kultura, Social Science Diliman, Philippine Humanities Review, Modern Drama, and Humanities Diliman. He is the author of Buhol-Buhol/Entanglement: Contemporary Theatre in Metropolitan Manila (Peter Lang, 2017), Entablado: Theatres and Performances in the Philippines (University of the Philippines Press, 2015), the National Book Award Finalist for Best Book on Art Performing Catholicism: Faith and Theatre in a Philippine Province (also from the University of the Philippines Press, 2016), and the National Book Award Winner (Best Book on Art) Cosmopolitanism, Theatre, and the Philippines: Performing Community in a World of Strangers (University of the Philippines Press, 2018). A professor (Professor 3) of theatre and performance studies from the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman Department of Speech Communication and Theatre Arts and conferred upon him the title University Artist (UP Artist II) under the UP Artist Productivity System Award (2014–present), Tiatco is currently the Director of the UP Diliman Information Office.