Meet LKDC's Director

Ms. Teresita Veloso - Pil

Executive Director & Choreographer

Miss Pil has dominated the dance scene in Leyte, starting out with a ballet studio at the Holy Infant Academy in 1955 with students coming as far as Baybay, Ormoc, Catbalogan, and other neighboring towns. Her annual students' dance recitals and other seasonal ballet presentations, were always cultural events that brought to the people of Leyte wider dimensions in their appreciation of the arts.

In 1961, she ventured into folkdance when she was asked by Sister Mary Canisius, the school directress, to present a show for the academy's College Day Celebration. When asked why she decided on a folkdance presentation and not a ballet show, Miss Pil said, "At that time there was a going back to the past, a seeking out of our beginnings to search for the Filipino soul."

The unprecedented response to the initial presentation of the Leyte Filipiniana Folkdance Troupe (now the Leyte Kalipayan Dance Company) and the invitations that poured from different parts of the islands inspired Sister Canisius and Miss Pil to develop the group into a world class company.

While her venture into folkdance was a sort of an "accident", Miss Pil was prepared to delve into folkdance's many-faceted character. In her high school days, she was a major dancer in the Holy Infant Academy dance troupe organized by Sister Simeona, a Benedictine nun. It was as a high school senior that Miss Pil choreographed a dance drama titled An Nabasag nga Banga (The Broken Jar) which garnered First Prize in Folkdance in the literary-musical competition for that year.

In college she majored in History, after a short detour to journalism, which she says is her first love. Her studies on the culture of the Balugas and the Negritos of Zambales and Pampanga, which was a college term paper, opened her eyes to the beauty of the dances of our mountain tribes in the Philippines.

Miss Pil holds a master in Folklore Studies from Xavier University. She has gone on extensive researches on the dances of the Ifugaos of northern Luzon and the exotic dances of the mountain tribes of Mindanao Island on a grant from Asia Foundation.

Her masteral thesis, the Ethno-choreology of the Ifugaos, is the ethnological study of the culture of the Ifugaos through the phenomenon of dance.

Miss Pil is a published writer of children's books, by New Day Publishers, Quezon City and Heimann Educational Books, Inc. in Hongkong.

Miss Pil is a member of the Folklore Society of the Philippines and the Children's Literature Association of the Philippines.