If Bohol was dance, it would surely be kuradang: rich, brisk, fluid, flared and impossibly romantic.
Traditional kuradang is relatively simple yet surprisingly complex; its simple beauty is betrayed by an intricate flourish of hand and finger dexterity that few can master.
Every awkward movement forcing the body to go languid and then limp is a picture of the Boholano: rigidly stiff and serpentinely pliant like its long and proud history.
And with every sharp stamp of the feet, twist of the hips and snap of the fingers, a new chapter in the period of Bohol history is written.
These are also the pages that everyone who looks deeper will read again and again.
In Loboc, where world-class singing groups thrive with instrumentalists, the occasional pitter-patter of the rondalla on board the tourism balsas completes preaching the gospel of the kuradang music
Kuradang fills the rural pre or post-wedding rituals.
Formally, like the Spanish-influenced curacha, the groom in the kuradang is perpetually conspicuous in his striped barong organza as he starts the routine, like its western counterpart, with an elaborate curtsy.
And beyond that, everything explodes into non-compliance with the western sister dance: anything goes.
See the exaggerated feet-stamping as defiance and assertion of the occupation in space, the intricate hand-twisting as shooing away Hispanic intruders as well as flicking away the flies sharing his food, belly gyrating in imitation of nature, rolling to the ground and lolling in placid surrender: in the dancing vocabulary of merry antics possessing the kuradang dancer.
The dancing of the kuradang completes the groom’s total initiation into the clan.
Sayawon ta, ang kuradang ang sayaw nga kinaraan, maoy paborits sa mga tigulang, ang nindot nga sayaw nga kuradang.
A dance tracing the regal Spanish flamenco and the ethnic twists of the animist ritual worship, kuradang has seeped through the fancy of the Boholano young and old.
Maoy paborito sa mga tigulang, ang nindot nga sayaw nga kuradang.
