Bayanihan Philippine Folk Dance Company

The term Bayanihan, which means coming together to work for the common good, became one of the most popularized Filipino words in the world because of the popularization of the Bayanihan Philippine Folk Dance Company. This dance company is said to be one of the oldest dance companies in the Philippines. This company originated at the University of the Philippines and the Philippine Women’s University in 1957 and was founded by Helena Z. Benitez. Its dances were heavily influenced by the work of Francisca Reyes Aquino who published one of the first Filipino written books on Filipino cultural dances in 1946 called Philippine National Dances and who became the folk dance pioneer for the company. Bayanihan has won many international awards since its debut in 1958 at the Brussels World’s Fair. Many question the validity of its cultural dances, but despite this there is world-wide support and interest in their dances.

In the 1920s, Francisca Reyes Aquino, a student assistant instructor at the University of the Philippines, was asked to teach Philippine folk dances. She found this task easy because there were no accepted written or recorded documents on these folk dances; therefore, she can change whatever she likes because no one knows the original dances except her. From 1924-1926, she traveled the islands and documented the styles of dances and photographed them. In 1946, she published her 7 year-in-the-making book called Philippine National Dances. Her aim for this book was to preserve the Filipino dances, but she found that she changed a lot of them to fit a sophisticated oriental western influenced ideal and this came to be known as the Bayanihan style. She taught at major Filipino folk dance camps and conducted workshops at many universities, and for many years she was consultant to the Bayanihan Folk Dance Troup.


In 1957, the University of the Philippines had organized the Filipiniana Folk Music and Dance committee which later evolved to the Bayanihan Folk Art Association. The Bayanihan Dance Company developed as a branch of this organization led and founded by Helena Z. Benitez who was former Chairperson at the Philippine Women’s University. They troupe gained popularity on May 27, 1958 when they performed at the Universal Exposition at the Brussels World’s Fair which was televised across the United States. From there, they were asked to perform on Broadway in New York by Sol Hurok in 1959 where NY critics claimed them “the Cinderella of Dance Theater”. They gained popularity across the globe as being the first Filipino group to perform on Broadway, the first non-American dance company to take to the stage at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and the first Philippine cultural group to perform in Russia, the People's Republic of China and throughout South America. They have gone through fourteen major world tours and one hundred smaller ones.



It is no wonder why Filipinos are looked upon as good dancers and why many Filipino-Americans imitate this dance company despite its lack of authenticity. This dance company not only set a good reputation for Filipino performing arts across the world, it has also made its own dances that are widely used today in Pilipino Cultural Nights (PCN) in Universities and Filipino cultural dance troops across the United States. It made an impact globally and locally in Filipino and non-Filipino societies by giving Filipinos a cultural identity associated with the mixture of Muslim, Spanish, and American culture.

-V Chavez