PMA cadets get silly for holiday show

BAGUIO CITY—’Tis the season to be silly at the Philippine Military Academy (PMA).

During their annual 100th Nite Show on Dec. 16 and 17, cadets donned wigs and spoofed a fantasy soap broadcast. Male and female cadets gamely strode on stage in gladiator armor and light, shimmering gowns, making comical faces, displaying the dougie (a hiphop dance step) and belting out their best rendition of Katy Perry songs.

The performances were an amalgamation of the best the cadets could offer.

The Corps of Cadets’ own rock band pumped up electric guitars and drums to their highest decibels to provide rapid-fire music for their in-house film club, and their best animators, who flashed movie clips as stage scenery transitioned to a new chapter of the show.

The corps’ dance club strutted when the songs were Michael Jackson’s, and pirouetted when violins serenaded the solemn moments of the show.

In 1939, the very first 100th Nite Show performed for the academy had a humbler backdrop for a song-and-dance routine, said Cadet First Class Kim Talaban of the Bagwis (Bagong Kawal na May Iisang Lakas) Class of 2012.

Talaban, an editor of PMA publication “The Corps,” said the cadets performed the 100th Nite Show principally to leave behind their legacy as they marched forward to a military career.

“It was started by underclass cadets, who wanted to send off the graduating upperclass cadets with a tribute show. The 100th Nite Show referred to a hundred nights before graduation [which used to be in February],” he said.

“But my generation of cadets encountered a far different 100th Nite Show. These shows were mounted by upperclassmen to give underclass cadets something memorable about the senior members of the cadet corps. They also performed them for their foster families in Baguio, who came with their children,” he said.

According to the PMA’s The Academy Scribe, the Dialectic Society of the cadet corps presented the first 100th Nite Show outside the academy at the Baguio Convention Center on Dec. 17, 1978.

This year, the show paid tribute to 2nd Lt. Jose Delfin Keh, one of the 19 soldiers killed in an ambush in Basilan in October. Keh was remembered as a popular actor who performed in the 100th Nite Show in 2009.

Some military officers recalled some of the more ribald, and often politically colored 100th Nite Shows performed in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“The 100th Nite Shows were sometimes the only way the cadets could express their frustrations about society when everyone blamed the soldier for martial law,” said a retired soldier, who asked not to be named so as not to offend his colleagues.

Off-color political jokes, however, have not been welcome in a reformed PMA, which discourages cadets from entertaining any political ideology until after they undergo a leadership-centered curriculum, said Brig. Gen. Maximo Caro, PMA commandant of cadets.

The show was performed days after the cadets’ last examinations before they went for their Christmas break. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon