"Like Water"

 

The biggest, grandest and much awaited festival was taken the center stage once again last January 15,2012. The Sinulog Festival is one of the country’s festive pageantry of sights, colorful parades, elaborate decorations, tribal and modern music merge together to create a merriest music to entertain not just the Cebuano people but also the tourist who came here to witness the spectacle event. The festival is held each year on the third Sunday of January in Cebu City to honor the Santo Niño, or the child Jesus, who used to be the patron saint of the whole province of Cebu, it is essentially a dance ritual which remembers the Filipino people’s pagan past and their acceptance of Christianity.

 

The Sinulog celebration lasts for nine days, culminating on the final day with the Sinulog Grand Parade. The day before the parade, the Fluvial Procession is held at dawn with a statue of the Santo Niño carried on a pump boat from Mandaue City to Cebu City, decked with hundreds of flowers and candles. The procession ends at the Basilica where a re-enactment of the Christianizing of Cebu is performed. In the afternoon, a more solemn procession takes place along the major streets of the city, which last for hours due to large crowd participating in the event.

The word Sinulog comes from the Cebuano adverb sulog which roughly means "like water current movement;" it describes the forward-backward movement of the Sinulog dance. The dance consists of two steps forward and one step backward, done to the sound of drums,. The steps are believed to be originated from Rajah Humabon’s adviser, Baladhay.  It categorized into Sinulog-base, Free-Interpretation.

It features a street parade with participants in bright colored costumes dancing to the rhythm of drums, trumpets and native gongsSanto Niño. There is also a "Sinulog sa Kabataan" performed by the youths of Cebu a week before the parade. Recently, the cultural event has been commercialized as a tourist attraction and instead of traditional street-dancing from locals; Sinulog also came to mean a contest featuring contingents from various parts of the country.