There’s a Manahan prominently involved in cultural events in the country. No, it’s not Mr. M — as in Johnny Manahan.
It’s Lilianne “Tats” Rejante-Manahan, the wife of Mr. M himself.
She has been president of the Alice Reyes Dance Philippines (ARDP), a ballet dance company formed in 2021, when Reyes, the National Artist for Dance, had to leave Ballet Philippines, a company she herself founded in 1969.
Rejante-Manahan has been Mrs. Johnny Manahan for decades now. They have two daughters, both full adults now, of course, and one of them carries a first name very close to that of her mother.
Rejante-Manahan used to write the scripts for the concerts and TV shows of Mr. M, went on to direct some TV shows herself (such as the iconic women’s show Ms.Cellaneous) until she decided to study art restoration abroad and take it up as a profession here in the country. Like Mr. M, Mrs. Manahan adeptly wears many hats, including being a curator for art exhibits and arts workshop facilitator.
And, oh, in her younger years, she was a dancer — a pioneering member of Hotlegs, said to be Manila’s premier jazz dance ensemble, featuring highly versatile, trained professional dancers and choreographers since 1981.
It was at the media conference for Carmina Burana, a ballet show on 14 to 15 June at the Samsung Performing Arts Center, that we learned from Rejante-Manahan that she was among the pioneering members of Hotlegs. In fact, the dance group was conceptualized at the sala of the young Manahan couple and it was Mr. M who thought out the name. And though it sounds like that of an all-female group, it had many male members, including someone who would eventually be known as a brilliant architect: Paulo Alcazaren.
However, if you google pictures of Hotlegs during its pioneering years, you won’t see the name Tats Rejante or Tats Rejante-Manahan. She was going by the name Rose Lee! (The exclamation point is for the fact that “Rose Lee” comes from Gipsy Rose Lee, an American burlesque entertainer, stripper, actress, author, playwright and vedette famous for her striptease act. Her 1957 memoir was adapted into the 1959 stage musical Gypsy.)
At first we thought Rejante-Manahan was at the media conference at the fabulous well-maintained pre-war mansion now known as Mira Nila Heritage House and Library in Mariposa Street, Horseshoe Village, Quezon City as an art-and-culture journo (which she is, too, actually). Upon seeing her there, we mentioned that we knew her so the other journos at the table didn’t bother to introduce us to each other. That’s why we didn’t know that she was there as Alice Reyes Dance Philippines (ARDP) president.
Actually, the last time we were keenly aware of Rejante-Manahan was at the time Floy Quintos was staging his play The Angry Christ at the University of the Philippines in 2017 April-May. The play was about the half-Pinoy, half Spaniard muralist Alfonso Ossorio and the mural of an angry-looking Jesus Christ he painted in the 1950s at the workers’ chapel of the Ossorio family-owned Victorias Milling estate in Negros Occidental.
Quintos (who passed away just last month) credits Rejante-Manahan as his consultant since Manahan had done some restoration work on the painting and on the chapel, and curated an exhibit of Ossorio’s works at the eminent Leon Gallery in Makati. We remember her attending the press preview at the Wilfrido Guerrero Theater. Quintos mentions Rejante-Manahan in some of his program notes for the play directed by Dexter Santos.
She wrote about how ARDP came about for the art-and-culture website coverstory.ph in 2022 August. The website editor provided these data about her: “Rejante-Manahan is by profession a surface decorator and conservator of wall paintings. She spent 18 years as a writer and director for television and documentaries. She is the founding manager of Hotlegs, Dance, Stunt, Mime and Gorilla Training Troupe, and a founding board member of Fundacion Centro Flamenco Manila. She is the immediate past chair of the Heritage Conservation Society. At present, she is the representative of the International Council on Monuments and Sites at the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.”
So there, now you know that there is a “Mrs. M” who professionally exists independently — and triumphantly! — from Mr. M who is now dynamically involved in GMA 7’s star-building programs. It is he who renamed GMA actors and singers collectively as “Sparkle Stars” when he moved on from ABS-CBN where he co-founded Star Magic with then-ABS-CBN general manager Freddie Garcia (who moved in from GMA 7.) Mr. M recently directed some lovetams of the Kapuso network in a concert tour in Canada. A member of his team there recently whispered to us that their boss has many surprises up in his sleeve for the Sparkle Stars and one of them could be a movie to thrill us all.
So there, now you know that there is a ‘Mrs. M’ who professionally exists independently — and triumphantly! — from Mr. M who is now dynamically involved in GMA 7’s star-building programs.
By the way, Mr. M himself started as a painter. He studied AB in Art History at the University of California, Berkeley in the late 60s. Until the late 70s, Mr. M was a visual artist, painter and sculptor. He received the “Special Citation” award at the Paris Biennale of Art in 1979. He was named one of Thirteen Artists of the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1972.
As late as 2016, Mr. M’s photos and videos were exhibited in Singapore in a group show dubbed as A Fact Has No Appearance: Art Beyond the Object which featured works of three Southeast Asian artists in the ‘70s that also included Reza Piyadasa (Malaysia) and Tan Teng-Kee (Singapore).
This paper has run several features on ARDP’s Carmina Burana, so you must already know enough about it, including the fact that the title of the ballet oevre does not refer to a woman.
What we’d like to do soon is write about another remarkable Filipino woman named Alice Reyes, National Artist for Dance. She’s in her early 80s but moves around and speaks as if she were just in her early 40s. Now we know why the young, the middle-aged and seniors in their 60s readily cast their lots with her.
We’ve also found out that she is not only into ballet dance creation, but is also doing well in her export business here in the country for years now.
