Derry City Council community relations officer Caroline Devenny (centre, right), with members from the Filipino community (from left), Erliza Bautista, Honey Zaragoza, Maylene Trabajada, Erlinda Silvosa, Jonah Atos, Miriam Pascua, and Geraldine Perez, help to make costumes in a Kabalikat in North West workshop, for the city’s Hallow’een parade.
The North West’s vibrant Filipino community will be providing some spine-chilling drama at what is shaping up to be a truly spooktacular Hallowe’en carnival parade in Derry on Friday, 31 October next.
Members of the Kabalikat association will be re-enacting scenes from Filipino folklore’s Festival of the Dead for the first time during Derry City Council’s annual Banks of the Foyle Hallowe’en Carnival which is expected to attract thousands of local and international visitors to the city.
Kabalikat was established in February of this year to provide support for the 130 members of the Filipino community residing in the Derry City Council area.
Jonah Atos, chairperson of the group, explained that while most of their community had been living and working in the Derry area for over 10 years, the group was formed to address feelings of isolation and their desire for greater involvement in the local community and with other cultural groups.
Kabalikat – which translates as ‘solidarity/you’ll never be alone’ – also aims to promote Filipino culture within the wider community, says Jonah, who has lived in Derry for almost 14 years. The group is excited to be sharing Hallowe’en tradition and myths from the Phillipines as part of the multi-cultural civic celebrations in its adopted home city.
Fifty members of Kabalikat including adults and children aged from five upwards, will be performing to an interpretative musical Hallowe’en themed dance along the route of the parade which is being co-ordinated by the North West Carnival Initiative (NWCI).
Jonah explained: “The performers will be dressed in various costumes, such as zombies, vampires, corpses, white lady, ghosts, skeletons, graveyard caretaker and the Filipino folklore Festival of the Dead characters called the ‘Aswangs’ or ‘Manananggals’, which are half-bodied flesh-eating women at night with large wings and big, strong teeth.”
Kabalikat members have been busy rehearsing in each other’s houses and at dance studio premises in Spencer Road, as well as attending NWCI workshops organised for the groups in the Rath Mor Centre.
Costumes, skulls, bones, lanterns, spears and other suitably frightening props are being created in readiness for the parade which will feature plenty of scary faces and moves from various cultural traditions, departing from Derry City Council offices, Strand Road, at 7pm on Friday, October 31st.
Derry City Council community relations officer Caroline Devenny (left), with members from the Filipino community Geraldine Perez and Miriam Pascua, help to make costumes in a Kabalikat in North West workshop, for the city’s Hallow’een parade. 4214-1837MT.
Derry City Council community relations officer Caroline Devenny (centre, right), with members from the Filipino community (from left), Erliza Bautista, Honey Zaragoza, Maylene Trabajada, Erlinda Silvosa, Jonah Atos, Miriam Pascua, and Geraldine Perez, help to make costumes in a Kabalikat in North West workshop, for the city’s Hallow’een parade.
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