DARAT

DARAT, Ilocano for flowing sand, land, or soil, is an immersive dance-ritual fashion performance by interdisciplinary artist Lydia Querian, created for Filipino-American History Month. Rooted in ancestral memory, diasporic movement, and Indigenous Oceanic relationships, the work honors Filipino plantation laborers while imagining pathways toward healing, remembrance, and collective connection.

Created in commemoration of the 120th anniversary of the arrival of the Sakadas in Hawaiʻi, DARAT offers a timely and rooted reflection on Filipino history in the islands. The production brings this history into the present through a contemporary lens for a new generation, with a predominantly Filipino diasporic cast and creative community. It is the first production of its kind in Honolulu to honor this history through the convergence of contemporary dance, fashion, music, ritual, and embodied storytelling.

The performance brings together four collections from Querian’s brand, Elle Karayan, and a new folk-contemporary dance work incorporating kulintang music, ritualized movement, fashion, and embodied storytelling. The runway becomes a ceremonial space for walking prayer, breath, memory, and transformation. Garments become stories of migration, survival, rupture, and resilience.

As a Sakada descendant living in Hawaiʻi, Querian situates Filipino diasporic histories within a wider web of Indigenous relationships across the Philippines and Oceania. DARAT moves through the elements of land, water, wind, and fire, acknowledging the wounds of colonization while envisioning diaspora as a gathering, a reweaving, and a return to collective wholeness.

The work emerges through cultural exchanges, movement workshops, archival research, artisan practices, embodied experimentation, and a unique dance-fashion performance that bridges generations and cultural traditions.

Directed by Lydia Querian with music direction by award winning percussion musician/instructor and composer Kevin Calamayan. Special guests include researcher/writer Adam Keawe and social media influencer Jon Luigi.

Produced by House of Gongs & supported by East-West Center Arts Program, New Music USA, and Ho‘akea Source.