Santacruzan with a twist.
This is how the University of Santo Tomas (UST) Faculty of Arts and Letters Class 1975 and Dry Brush Gallery envision a Mayflower festivity.
From the historic discovery of Queen Helena of Constantinople of the Holy Cross with her son Constantine, the fest of Santacruzan was born and evolved.
It is a parade of Queen Helena (translated in the Filipino language as Reyna Elena) and other Biblical characters represented by sagalas (plural form for little girls or maidens dressed in royal garbs in a religious procession) to celebrate the merry month of May which believed to be the feast of Queen Helena.
In as much as graduates of arts and letters are instilled with the idea of revisiting, revising, restructuring, debunking, redesigning and reforming a particular notion, object, scenario, institution, and situation for positive change and betterment of men, UST Artlets '75 with the collaboration of Dry Brush Gallery have thought of tweaking the traditional Santacruzan into poetry based on an existing literary genre.
In Maytime activities, a sagala recites a poem of veneration to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the heralded Queen of Flowers perched on a pedestal to show the power of poetry to change the world for the better with the guidance of the Holy Rosary's vision of an ideal life.
Sagala Angel Evangelista as Reyna de las Estrellas will declaim a piece of religious verse from an old file of lua/luwa, a poetic form influenced by Ilonggo culture to venerate the Blessed Virgin.
This time, the annual Santacruzan is called Sagalahan with a traditional lua/luwa which is found in Lopez, Quezon will be recited by Angel at the Dry Brush Gallery at SM North EDSA Interior Zone at 4:00 p.m. Thursday, May 30, 2024.
Elementary teacher Rita Erandio Arche has been keeping copies of the lua/luwa which she taught the local sagalas.
"Flores de Mayo ni Birhen Maria" is an occasion to drumbeat the Golden Jubilee celebration of UST Artlets '75 in 2025.
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