Gwen wants to watch ‘Prison Dancer’

CEBU Gov. Gwendolyn Garcias is excited about the off Broadway musical  “Prison Dancer” and  said she may  go to New York to watch it.

“If I get  an invitation, I will cetainly be interested to find  time to watch it. I’m so proud. This is an inspirational story,” she said.

The musical was inspired by YouTube videos of dancing inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center (CPDRC).

“I am really elated, delighted, and so proud of this new development. For once, this will be  positive news about the Philippines that after all, here in Cebu, at the CPDRC, we are showing that something good can be achieved in what would otherwise have been a most negative and hopeless environment,” Garcia told reporters.

The play will be presented in the New York Music Festival  at the St. Clements Theatre from July 20 to 28.

“It’s something true. I know of one inmate  who was really so touched by his new found sense of self-respect because of the fame the CPDRC inmates had achieved,” Garcia said.

The choreographed exercises, first set to hit songs of Michael Jackson, were  introduced as an experiment in prison rehabilitation by her brother Byron Garcia, the  Capitol’s security consultant.  He uploaded the video on YouTube in April 2007 and “Thriller” became viral.

Byron was let go after his contract ended in 2010 following a fallout with the governor, allegedly over the accounting of donations  to the inmates and operations of the jail. /Ador Vincent S. Mayol, Reporter