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From Mountains and Rivers to the Human Spirit: Theater as Cultural Immersion

The first sound was not applause. It was the steady call of drums, ancient and deliberate, reminding the body that before theater becomes art, it is ritual, memory, and land made visible.

LIJIANG, YUNNAN, CHINA | December 26, 2025 — The educational theater immersion and performance experience centered on Li Shui Jin Sha (Mountains and Rivers Show), presented at the Lijiang International Ethnic Cultural Exchange Center, a space dedicated to the preservation and exchange of ethnic cultures. The immersion formed part of the continuing artistic and academic engagement of Erolle Linus T. Miranda, Artistic Director of Central Mindanao Colleges Teatro Pawan, under the Institute of Culture and the Arts headed by Director Madame Marivic Quiambao Pascual.

Joining Miranda were key administrators of Central Mindanao Colleges, Victor Quiambao Jr. and Mark Gennesis B. Dela Cerna, both art patrons whose presence affirmed institutional commitment to culture not as enrichment, but as essential education.

Li Shui Jin Sha unfolded as a sequence of embodied histories drawn from the daily life, labor, rituals, and spiritual traditions of Yunnan’s ethnic communities. Drum-driven sections established communal rhythm and grounded physicality, evoking work, harvest, and collective endurance. These moments emphasized precision over excess, allowing repetition to clarify meaning rather than amplify spectacle.

Contrasting passages revealed restraint and lyricism. Movement softened into gestures shaped by gravity, breath, and control, suggesting water, wind, and seasonal transition. Costumes functioned as cultural markers rather than ornamentation, reinforcing identity while allowing the performer’s body to remain the primary text.

The surrounding environment deepened the performance’s meaning. The nearby Jade Dragon Snow Mountain formed part of the natural backdrop, offering scale, continuity, and historical gravity. The performance did not attempt to rival the landscape. It aligned itself with it.

For spectators, the immersion demonstrated how environment informs performance, with nature functioning not merely as inspiration but as an integral part of the theatrical language. Meaning emerged through rhythm, spatial composition, and silence rather than narrative explanation, inviting active reflection rather than passive consumption.

Reflecting on the experience, Director Miranda observed:

“Theater becomes truthful when it knows where it stands. When land, culture, and people are respected, performance does not compete with nature. It belongs to it.”

This experience is aligned with SDG 4, SDG 11, and SDG 17 through quality arts education, cultural preservation, and international collaboration.

As Li Shui Jin Sha came to its close, the final image lingered not because it demanded attention, but because it earned it. What remained was not spectacle, but alignment. Theater rooted in place endures because it remembers where it comes from, and in doing so, reminds us where we stand.

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