BONIFACIO Commandante thought of a better way to revive and teach the ancient script Baybayin. He does not use blackboards or chalks, but movement.

?If you will teach this through regular methods, it is like teaching Spanish and (students) learning nothing after two semesters. But if there is movement, people will easily visualize (and learn) it,? Comandante says.

Baybayin, or commonly called Alibata, is the pre-Hispanic Philippine writing system, syllabic in form and composed of three vowels and 14 consonants.

In 2008, Comandante developed seven forms of movement, miming the ancient script and referred to it as the Liping Baybayin.

He developed a fitness dance and aerobic exercise, not patterned after Western fitness programs but acting out each Baybayin character. He describes another wellness exercise ?to be better than Tai-chi and smoother (to perform) because Baybayin (characters) are not angular (in form).?

He calls the three dance movements Aliw-iw (rhythm).

The Baybayin fitness, martial arts and wellness dances were first performed publicly in April during a teachers? forum at the Don Bosco Technical Institute in Makati City. Another presentation was held during an Aliw-iw dance forum at the University of the Philippines-Diliman on Sunday.

The dance runs for 10 minutes, following the beat of bamboo and indigenous instruments.

Giant clam

Comandante, who says he had never danced, sought the help of Ginahawa, a network of Baybayin enthusiasts, for the choreography. But he himself choreographed the Bang-si or the Baybayin ng Silangan, a form of martial arts inspired by Baybayin.

Bang-si is an old Tagalog word for ancient flute, he added.

Comandante also pierced through theater. ?If you watch ?Lola Basyang? (on stage), it (usually) uses ballet which is western, (whereas) if you use Baybayin, for example, in performing ?Bayan Ko,? you can readily ?read? the lyrics of the song acted out. That?s very Filipino.?

Lastly, he developed a hand sign language that uses Baybayin.

?We want to revive Baybayin by using it in our everyday actions,? he says, citing Baybayin characters used as shirt designs or skin tattoos.

?But if we really want to get it back to the mainstream, it should be rooted deep down to consciousness,? he stresses.

Comandante, who was first recognized for his ?sleeping fish? technology or fish hibernation, began his study of the ancient script in the late ?80s.

His present dissertation topic for a doctorate in Anthropology dwelt on Baybayin, which, he says, originated in the Philippines?contrary to prevalent beliefs of literature that it was rooted from Java.

?When you study the ancient Filipino (civilization), you can not help touching the ancient script,? he says.

His attempt to prove his claim was based on his study of the giant clam Taclobo, an endemic mollusk found in Palawan that weighs more than 200 kilos and the biggest was about 1.4 meters in size.

He believed that the Baybayin characters were derived from the shape of the clam.

?I am getting strong evidence that our ancient script came from this,? he said.

Lucban kids

Performing the Aliw-iw dance needs no professional dancers.

?These were the eight kids from Lucban,? Comandante said. The children, aged 8 to 12 years old, are those of a colleague, whom he first taught the Baybayin.

?It only took them two days to learn how to read and write the Baybayin,? he says.

The children were first asked to draw Baybayin several times on a piece of paper. They were then asked to act out each character.

?Their creativity also came out,? he says.

They learned the script so fast because ?(Baybayin) is inherent in us,? Comandante says.

As an example, he cited the word bàba or babà, which ?means to carry heavy load. When I was young I used to tell my siblings to babà, which meant to climb on my back.?

He says it is the same word used to mean putting something down, that according to ancient studies, Filipino ancestors used when telling someone to carry the clams and shells into the caves.

?The things that pervaded in our consciousness are the ones that molded us,? he adds.

Comandante finds it hard to introduce the ancient script through the present education system, saying it would need them to go through several processes.

?We don?t care if we are not acknowledged from above (the education system), but we are starting from below. It?s like termites you?ll be surprised when you realize how they multiplied,? he said.