BACOLOD CITY - The 30th MassKara Festival—four days of street dancing competitions—kicked off on Thursday with 11 contingents joining the schools category at the Bacolod public plaza.
The competition was held in cooperation with the Department of Education in Bacolod City.
The barangay category will be at 2 p.m. Saturday and the open category on Sunday. The Electric MassKara street dance, which has been transformed into a Ledge Dancing competition, on the other hand, will take center stage at 8 p.m. Friday at the Lacson Tourism Strip.
"To mark the third decade of the festival with the theme, '30 Years of Smiles,' we hope to highlight the elements that have made it a very popular festival: happiness, cheerfulness and optimism as captured in our smiling masks, faces and costumes in bright and bold colors," festival director Eli Tajanlangit said on Wednesday.
The schools, barangay and open category contests will have Libertad-Araneta streets as starting point for the dancers, who will pass through the Araneta parade route up to the public plaza.
The two areas of competition will be the street dance and arena performance. The judges will be stationed along the parade routes.
Each contingent will have a minimum of 35 dancers and a maximum of 60.
Cash prizes for the schools category are P50,000, P30,000 and P20,000 for first, second and third, while for both the open and barangay category, the prizes are P100,000, P75,000 and P50,000 for first, second and third places.
For the street dance, the groups will be judged on their choreography, performance and production design for their masks, costumes and props. For the arena performance, the criteria are concept, choreography, performance, and production design.
Special awards will be given for the Best Mask and Best Costume, which have been pre-judged.
For the first Electric MassKara Ledge Dance Competition, seven contingents are joining with each group to have a minimum of 15 and maximum of 20 dancers.
The festival was first held in 1980 to cheer people up and show that Bacolod could smile and rise again despite its pain and trials. At that time, the sugar industry was in a slump and the interisland ferry MV Don Juan had just sunk en route to Bacolod from Manila, killing hundreds of people, many of them Bacolodans.
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