NEGRENSE FMA TO BE FEATURED IN CINCO DE NOVEMBRE CELEB

English teacher Wilson Alvarado of the Ramon Torres-Malingin (right) crosses sticks with his teacher Master Ferdinand Emmanuel “Bobot” Y. Gayoles.

The Bago City Government will be celebrating the 107th Cinco De November this coming November 5, 2005 with a comedy theatrical play that will be participated in by all high schools including Bago City College, OLPA of Ma-ao, and Ramon Torres-Malingin.

The Ramon Torres-Malingin students will be presenting a play that will dramatize the warrior spirit and martial tradition of Gen. Araneta and Gen. Lacson and all the other Negrenses who rallied behind them to dominate the Spaniards. Their play will feature the indigenous arts Yasay sable, Lapu-Lapu Viñas arnis, oido de caburata, and tapado. With the exception of Lapu-Lapu Viñas arnis which comes from Bacolod, all above mentioned arts came from Bago City, the home of some of the better forms of Negrense arnis or Filipino martial arts (FMA).

The action scenes are being choreographed by English teacher Wilson Alvarado, who is a student of Master Ferdinand Emmanuel “Bobot” Y. Gayoles of the Yasay sable line. Alvarado, who came from a family of bastoneros, had just recently been accepted as a member to the Bacolod based Conceptual Martial Arts Society, a brotherhood dedicated to the research, preservation, and propagation of the various forms of Negrense FMA.