Ballet Philippines’ PAGLALAKBAY Explores Movement As Origin and Return

A choreography shaped by landscape, carried by memory, and anchored in one of the oldest human impulses: to move toward a horizon. The company’s new full-length work, PAGLALAKBAY: The Journey of the Sea People, premieres April 10–12, 2026 at The Theatre at Solaire, tracing the ancient Austronesian migration through a movement language that feels both precise and instinctive.

Choreographer Mikhail Martynyuk turns to the terrain of Batanes as his guide. There, wind is constant, the ground is uneven, and the ocean draws clean, steady lines across the edge of the land. These elements find their way into the body. Weight dropped into the floor as if meeting resistance, torsos tipping forward with a sense of direction, arms shaped not for decoration but for purpose. The movement is classical in foundation but shaped by the environment that inspired it.

The ballet’s emotional framework comes from librettist Sheree Chua, who brings the narrative to life through personal history. She speaks of movement as expansion, an opening outward that still holds its point of origin. Through her lens, the Sea People’s voyage becomes both an epic crossing and a familiar gesture passed through generations. What might have been a distant historical arc becomes a present, lived line.

To create the production’s visual world, Leeroy New with assistant designer Arvie Santos traveled to Batanes and immersed themselves in the island’s rhythms. They observed how grass shifts direction with the wind, how cliffs meet the ocean with absolute clarity, how the horizon stretches without interruption. These impressions shaped a design built from natural materials, chosen for the way they move. Costumes follow the same principle, made to lift and ripple with each step so the dancers appear to share breath with the landscape they evoke.

PAGLALAKBAY also carries the spirit of Ballet Philippines’ Ballet Brigade outreach in 2024, where over 200 locals in Batanes gathered with the company to share dances and stories. The exchange offered a grounding sense of continuity, the ballet remembers that day in its tone, its gestures, and its commitment to honoring the community that inspired it.

Presenting the work as the finale of the company’s 56th Season, BP President Kathleen Liechtenstein sees PAGLALAKBAY as a step toward giving Filipino narratives the full breadth of the classical stage. The ballet acknowledges the magnitude of the Austronesian migration while offering something equally present: a renewed sense of identity, carried forward through movement.

In PAGLALAKBAY, dance becomes a way of returning, returning to land, to lineage, to the stories that continue to move with us. The past does not sit behind the dancers; it travels with them, quiet and steady, shaping each line and each shift of weight. Through choreography, light, and a visual world shaped by wind and earth, the ballet invites audiences to experience history not as something fixed, but as something still in motion.

When and Where To Watch It

PAGLALAKBAY: The Journey of the Sea People
April 10–12, 2026
The Theatre at Solaire

How To Get Tickets 

• www.ticketworld.com.ph

• www.ballet.ph

• Solaire Box Office