Stomp!

Back in high school, idle times were made for the simple drumming of fingers against any surface, and sometimes the really wacky classmates would stomp around and slap their hands on their thighs to the beat of the La Salle spelling song, which I easily caught on by shyly imitating their movements while still seated. In senior year, I resorted to taking drum lessons to have any semblance of musicality in my life as a wallflower, and easily read the drum notation my classmate wrote for me when we tried to start a band in our first year of college.

When I heard that Stomp was coming to Manila, I was so excited, but I had no idea how I could manage to get hold of a ticket considering I never set aside a budget for it. I thought I would never have a chance to see it. Until my phone rang early yesterday afternoon, waking me up from a nap. It was Paulo, saying that he had a spare ticket to the show that very afternoon at 3pm. And when I looked at the time, it was already 1:30pm. I immediately said yes to the ticket and flew to CCP as fast as I could. Woohoo, made it to CCP in record time, just 10 minutes before the show. Super thank you for the ticket, Pao!

My goodness, those guys were amazing. They came up with anything that made even the slightest bit of sound, from simple claps, brooms (one of them--whom I heard was half Pinoy--first came in bringing a walis tambo, hahaha!), buckets, tubes to even plastic bags, Zippo lighters (that part was one of my favorites!) and even the simple sound of a foot or a chair sliding against a surface. All this was done as they crossed the stage in perfect choreography, or sometimes even suspended from a harness. Awesomeness. I was practically on the edge of my seat the entire time, anticipating what they would come up next.

Stomp was quite the experience, complete with audience participation. I sure hope they'd come back soon. I'd willingly audition for something like this, hahaha.