Dramatic leads twirl the light fantastic in ‘dance teleserye’

RAYMOND Bagatsing

BILLED as Philippine TV’s first “dance teleserye,” “Time of My Life” premiered last week and we watched to find out what the “excitement” was all about.

It looks like the show is shaping up to be a rivalry, in dance and in affairs of the heart, between two competitive women played by Cherie Gil and Jean Garcia.

No spring chickens

In the first episode they were fighting over one man, a male dancer portrayed by Raymond Bagatsing. His affair with Cherie’s character was ending, but she didn’t want to let him go, so she went berserk when she found out that he was already romancing Jean.

A pas de troi that’s hot to trot, and also a triangle designed to make televiewers tingle? Gotcha.

All three leads are no longer spring chickens, so we get the distinct impression that the two dancing divas’ rivalry will extend to next generation, with their respective children growing up into adolescents, or teenagers fated to carry on their moms’ competitive relationship in even more intricately convoluted ways.

CHERIE Gil

Our initial impressions of the show? First off, the dancing isn’t as good as it should be for a “dance drama.” That’s strange and even ironic in the Philippines, where nobody has two left feet. But that’s the way it goes on local TV, where “puwede na yan” is the operative rule. Oh, the lead dancers aren’t bad, they’re simply not exceptional enough for us to believe that their rivalry is really topnotch.

Par for the course

In terms of acting, the leads do better— except that they aren’t given characters and scenes that are challenging enough to be truly exciting for them to portray.

Intense and even obsessive romantic rivalries are par for the TV course— vengeance and psychological violence are like mother’s milk to us who suckle on local TV teats for our hyper entertainment and “nourishment.”

It would have been better, therefore, if a new TV series like this could have offered something different. Yes, the focus on dance is relatively novel, but if the dancing itself isn’t unquestionably superlative, that new advantage’s capital is unfortunately diminished.

JEAN Garcia

Well, it’s still early days for the show, so we hope it will soon galvanize its act— sufficiently for us to get more genuinely excited, the next time we catch it on GMA 7.

Incidentally, it looks like this is the year for Jean Garcia to reveal the dancing side to her total profile as a performer. Heretofore, we have seen her playing many “arch-eyebrowed” kontrabidas in turgid dramas, but now she’s twirling the light fantastic not just on TV, but also in the movies!

Unexpected

We’ve just watched the Cinemalaya feature, “Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa,” and in it Jean stars as a dancer, teacher and choreographer who’s worshipped by two of her students.

In “Sayaw,” as in “Time of My Life,” Jean’s dancing is more proficient than prodigious and inspired. But it was still unexpected and an addition to her bag of performing abilities, so that’s all to the good.