August 11, 2020

Alyssa Marie Aballe

Leah Belle Acas

Krisha Kaye Dandasan

Angelu Rane Intol

Sheina Lastima

Dear Ms. Christine Rudinas,

We are a group of 3rd year students taking up BS Management Accounting currently

enrolled in Eng 7 – Art Appreciation as one of our subjects for the School Year 2020 – 2021.

As one of our major exams for this subject, we were tasked to interview at least 2 local artists to
ask questions revolving around the background, craft, style, and techniques of the artist. The
group was also tasked to include pictures – with consent, showing the works and
accomplishments of the artist. Our paper is due to be submitted on the 15th of the month of
August.

The group would like to express their heartfelt gratitude to be given a chance of an email
interview from you. We have at least 16 questions for the interview which would take about a
half of an hour to your time. We really appreciate your consideration of our request.

The next page of this file contains the group’s questions. Should you have any clarifications
regarding the questions, please feel free to reply to this email. Thank you so much and we really
look forward to getting to know our local artist.

Sincerely,

Alyssa Marie Aballe

Leah Belle Acas

Krisha Kaye Dandasan

Angelu Rane Intol

Sheina Lastima
 I. Please tell us a brief Introduction or background about yourself.

Hi! My name is Christine Marie P. Rudinas, people call me Tine. I am a member of the dance
group X-Unified and a dance teacher at the X-Unified Dance Studio. I am a 3rd Year BS
Chemistry student at Xavier Ateneo.

II. Interview Questions:

1. When and how did you start to discover your talent in dancing?
- I have been dancing since kindergarten. My parents made me join dance workshops,
which was a thing back then. I started dancing ballet and it lasted for 4 years. I, then started
doing modern dance, hip-hop and pop dance during my grade school and high school years,
then KPop until now. I was not a good dancer when I started. I was very shy that I barely did the
moves but as the years went by, I gained confidence on and off stage. I wouldn’t say that I
discovered my talent in dancing, I rather developed it.
2. How did you hone your skill as a dancer?
- Stretching, training, and practices. Being a dancer, one should be able to distort the
body lines to create art-like movements, and one should gain strength and control to put quality
into the moves especially when dancing with a group. This is where stretching becomes
important. Most people are lucky to be born flexible, and it is considered as a healthy trait. As a
not-so-flexible person, I stretch as often as I can to crack some joints, and rip some tendons.
Stretching helps in achieving certain moves that have angles and lengths. This also improves
posture and makes me grow taller (which is an all-kill). When X-Unified practices, we always
start with a stretching routine that lasts for about 30 minutes which includes intensive
movements and we do it by beat with a song.
Training also is very helpful in this aspect as strength and control do not only mean
going all-out in the dance or as we call it “burak”. We’ve had training sessions from
accomplished dancers in the country like Se-Eon, who has been competing around the world in
KPop cover dance contests. It was through them that we learned how important flexibility,
strength, and control is, and how to dance as a group. Since then, we could literally feel each
other’s energy as we dance. We’ve also had collaborations with some of the dance groups in
CDO like Hotmales, Siren, Legion, Unknwn, Xiera, and Class Act. We’ve learned a lot of styles
and techniques with them and also shared ours. When we had our training sessions with Se-
Eon, it was an hour of stretches, splits, workouts, and more hours of practice and refining -
ensuring synchronicity throughout the routine. We started from 10 in the morning and end at 6 in
the evening (with breaks of course ^^).
Practice is key. Being a good dancer means you can perform your routine without
mistakes, this applies to all performances. In doing so, practice helps. Practice, for us, means
we repeat on doing the routine (at a performance-level) until we can do it “with our eyes closed”.
In covering Kpop, we do not only focus on the choreography, we also do the ad-libs and
nuances of the artists. Yes, that includes lip-sync. After finishing the routine, we refine the
steps, then search for the song’s lyrics and study the artist’s mannerisms and gestures s/he did
during the song through videos. We basically do 2-3 runs every practice focusing on ad-libs.
Our practices usually last for 5 hours depending on how difficult the routine is.

3. What style do you prefer in dancing?

- I personally prefer “light feet” dancing, which is something similar to “house” because it
is very fun and challenging. It also makes me feel light even though I look heavy. When I am
also given the chance of doing choreography, I usually put a lot of footwork, bounces, and
jumps with big upper body movements to make it look fun. Even when looking for KPop
choreographies, I tend to study the ones with complicated footwork combinations.

4. How was x-unified formed? Please tell us more about x-unified.

- X-Unified started as a unity dance group at Xavier Ateneo Grade School back in 2011.
We were in grades 5 & 6 (ages 11-12) then with our mentors Teacher Telai and Teacher
Connie. The unity dance group was an annual thing comprising of dancers from the Macasandig
and Pueblo campuses during the Grade School Feast of the Guardian Angels to avoid by-
campus competitions. It was a gesture of unifying the two campuses, and we were the 3 rd batch
of unity dancers at that time. We covered Bonamana by Super Junior and was the first batch to
perform a full KPop dance. Months later, the name X-Unified was formed as we joined CDO’s
first ever KPop Dance Cover Competition and won first place. “X-U” was taken from the school’s
name, and “Unified” was from the unity dance group. We started as a group of 8 members, then
7 as one flew out to the US, and now we are a total of 10 members with 6 active, and 1 inactive
members based in CDO, 2 in the US, and 1 in Australia.

5. What are the different mediums used in dancing?

- I’ve only known movement and music as the mediums in dancing which can come from
a lot of factors like experiences, interpretations, and creativity. Dance is made up of movements
and distortions of the body line that synchronizes or is accompanied with music by beats, lyrics,
and counts. It can show the identity of the dancer, or the interpretation of the music.

6. What can you say is x-unified’s technique in dancing that makes it unique from other
groups?
- What makes our technique unique from other groups maybe is on how we refine. When
we did collaborations with other dance groups, our ways of refining the dance routine was new
to most of them because we do not associate synchronicity with full power all-throughout the
dance. We’d rather find parts where we can take a breather and make certain moves more
graceful than powerful. Another is also how we would view a run. When we do polishing, the
one that refines, which is mostly our mentors, looks at a peripheral view which is above our
heads or on our feet. Most groups polish by looking at a member individually. This also shows
how much of an advantage our mentors are. Life has been easier with them polishing us.

7. How does x-unified attract its audience to watch your performances?

- We attract our audience to watch by our choice of songs. We make sure that the songs
we cover are familiar to most of the audience, and that the dance is also attractive to look at.
This is why we cover a lot of BTS songs and most of them are performed shortly after its
release.

8. How is dancing unique from other artistic fields?

- Dancing is unique because, like painting, it is a self-expression but shown through
movements with the principles of time, rhythm and spatial organization. An example of
expression is the style “Krumping” which is known for expressing the oppression and anger
towards the Blacks and was revolutionary to the dancing community. Dancing also has a
relationship with visual arts where a dance aesthetic can be associated through a painting. This
is common with ballet.

9. Where do you get your inspiration in dancing?.

- Through the years, dancing has become my happy outlet. It is where I can have fun,
take up challenges, and (maybe) keep myself “fit”. And now that I’ve been teaching kids how to
dance, it is very fulfilling to see how they’ve improved. I’ve had students that had hard bones to
crack, but they also work as hard as us teachers to dance well. These students of mine that
were once very very shy can now conquer the whole stage. I get my inspiration through them,
their hard work, and desire to become dancers.

10. How do you plan your theme/costumes when you perform?

- When we started, costumes were usually uniformed so we’ve had themes like all-
whites, neons, all-blacks, black-red-white ensemble etc. In covering KPop, costumes play a big
role because you have to get the look and vibe of the artist you’re covering, and those things
are specific to each song. When we’ve decided on a song to cover, we would watch some of the
artists’ live performances and music videos to decide on the theme. For each song, there are
about 2-3 themes and we would choose a theme that is convenient for us and, at the same
time, exhibits “star factor”. Ukay-ukay is the key <3

11. How many hours or days does it usually take to prepare for a performance?
- It can take as long as 5 months and as short as 3 days to prepare for a quality
performance. It depends on the situation and on the people you’re with. When we started, it took
us 5 months to refine, and partly because we were still very young back then, we didn’t have
any special training yet. When we’re preparing for a competition, it usually takes 2 months or 2
weeks with training. The shortest time preparation we’ve had for a competition was a week and
it was for XUFD’s Hip Hop Extreme back in 2018. Choreographing a routine takes more time
and brain energy than to cover for a song. When we’re preparing for a guest performance, it
also depends on the routines we use, whether it is recycled or new. The shortest time of
preparation we did for a new cover was a week, and 3 days for a recycled one. Practices
usually last for 5-8 hours per day.

12. Has x-unified participated in dancing competitions? If so, how would you describe your
experience?
- We’ve participated in competitions and most of these are nation-wide. We had to shell-
out money, more like beg money from our parents because of our young age, find the cheapest
plane tickets, look for places to stay, double our efforts in practices, find more striking costumes,
and deal with endless body pains. Luckily, we’ve managed to do so and things went smooth. It
was during competitions where we’ve made friends around the KPop community, most of them
are also dancers. Despite of how energy-draining it is to prepare and to join in dancing
competitions, it was always one for the books.
 13. What are the achievements and milestones that x-unified garnered? (Kindly indicate
your awards, including pictures of it.)
2020
Ayala Centrio’s Mall into Shape KPop Dance Workshops (June - July 2020)

2018
Lambago Art Awardee for Dance
KPop Cover Dance Festival Top 4 (Pasig City, 2018)
Opening of the X-Unified Dance Studio (April 2018)

2016
BTS Dance Off Competition Grand Champion (SM Clark Pampanga, 2016)
2014
6th Philippine KPop Convention Dance Battle 1st Runner Up (SMX Convention Center, Mall of
Asia, Pasay City, 2014)

2012
1st Cagayan de Oro KPop Dream Event Dance Contest Champions (SM City CDO, 2012)

14. Does x-unified conduct workshops for aspiring dancers? Why or why not?
- Yes, we’ve conducted dance workshops since 2013 until now for every summer and
every three months. We wanted to share our knowledge in dancing from our experiences and
training, especially to KPop since there has been a growing population of cover groups here in
Cagayan de Oro, and there are a lot of young kids who aspire to become dancers and at the
same time, enjoy listening and dancing to KPop.

15. How has the pandemic affected x-unified as a group?

The pandemic made us see each other extremely rare, we would have practice only
once a week for 3-5 hours (for the Mall into Shape Workshops), which has been a big challenge
considering that we stopped dancing for 4 months, our moves became rusty, and our stamina
went lower. We’ve also became less active than before. We did announce that the group will be
laying-low since 2018 to focus on our studies, so we’d only appear on some KPop events to
perform or to assist as staff. Our workshops were also put on hold during the summer, so that
affected the studio’s rental, our wages, and the kids’ entertainment.

16. Are there projects that have been cancelled due to this pandemic? What are your
 strategies in attracting and maintaining your audience even in the midst of a pandemic?

There were a lot of events cancelled due to the pandemic. The dance workshops, their
workshops’ recital, some KPop events that were suppose to happen on May, June and August,
and even our rare and small get-togethers. Ayala Centrio’s project of having online dance
classes was of great help to maintain our audience, and to get a hold of our dance students
despite the pandemic, although we’ve decided to let other dance cover groups take our place
since our classes were starting and it became difficult for us to meet for practices and shoot.
Our plans as of now is to close down the studio and refund the kids’ registration money until
everything is okay.