Closing the first week of November, UP Diliman (UPD) received the sad news of the passing of Rina Angela P. Corpus, PhD, beloved member of the University faculty, artist, writer, and scholar on Friday, Nov. 6.
A member of the UPD College of Arts and Letters (CAL) faculty, she was an associate professor at the Department of Art Studies.
An artist, she was a dancer and an interdisciplinary artist. According to a CAL Facebook post, Corpus “trained and danced with the Quezon City Ballet and took dance workshops at the Limón Institute in New York. She founded the Galaw Nilay-Creative Collective, described on its Facebook page as a “multidisciplinary community exploring the intersections of the arts and collective care,” and Mahalaga Studio. She was also lead curator of the Ginhawa Project, which CAL described as “an arts initiative centered on Filipino experiences of ginhawa.” Ginhawa, roughly translated in English, means relief or ease of life.
An author, her books Defiant Daughters Dancing: Three Independent Women Dance and Dance and Other Slippages: Critical Narratives on Women, Dance, and Art were published by the UP Press in 2007 and 2014, respectively. She was the author of Defiant Daughters Dancing, a study CAL stated was, “on defiance exemplified by Filipino choreographers Myra Beltran, Kristin Jackson, and Agnes Locsin.” Corpus was also Kultura Editor of the Philippine Collegian.
A scholar, CAL stated “her scholarship examined art history, dance, the performing arts, and the relationship between movement and meditation.” Furthermore, Corpus’s doctoral research developed galaw-nilay, “a practice of meditative movement drawing on dance, Raja Yoga, and Qigong.”
Corpus earned her Bachelor of Arts in Art Studies, cum laude (1997) and Master of Art Studies (2004) from UPD and her Doctor of Philosophy in Dance and Dance Studies (2022) from The University of Melbourne in Australia.
Farewell, dearest Rina.