James A. Olorosisimo (Author)
Abstract
This ethnographic qualitative study researched the customary pukot fishing tradition of Barangay Cogon, Roxas City, Capiz, and re-interpretation as choreographed dance steps to preserve intangible cultural heritage. This study aimed to document beliefs, culture, practices, traditions, and values of pukot, create dance steps from these cultural materials, and validate the choreography through expert validation. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews, participant observation, field notes, and video. Twelve key informant respondents were purposively selected to offer rich accounts and insight. Thematic analysis was applied in qualitative data processing.Pukot was revealed to be beyond a livelihood activity but a culturally embedded practice that had been conditioned by ecological knowledge, spiritual values, communal effort, and instruction from ancestors. Even as younger generations increasingly depended on new tools and less on old signs, the fundamental cultural values of cooperation, respect for nature, and shared identity remained intact. The compose dance steps rested on genuine movements corresponding to real phases of pukot, such as, pagliga, pag-ariya, pagbatak, and pagkinaransa, and was considered authentic, pedagogically useful, and aesthetically meaningful by trained arbiters.This study concluded that there were ways of reimagining pre-modern fishing practices as rich performative heritage when they were practiced in ethnographic and grassroots ways. It also argued that participatory cultural research and creative documentation have the potential to help bring about the sustainable transmission of threatened cultural practice. The pukot dance steps composition was not only an artwork but a living repository of Capisnon tradition and identity.
Read the full text here.
Keywords: Pukot, Dance Composition, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Intangible Cultural Heritage, Cultural Transmission