Songs and Dance of Filipino Love

West Windsor residents Bob Fernandez and Marie Alonzo have teamed up to present a performance at “I’ll Have What’s She’s Having,” a Princeton YWCA dance production at Rider University’s Yvonne Theater on Saturday and Sunday, March 11 and 12. Fernandez will be playing a classical Filipino love song on guitar to accompany Alonzo in “Till You Return,” a dance choreographed by Alonzo. The music is composed by Constancio de Guzman Babalik Ka Rin and arranged by Fernandez.##M:[more]##Kundiman is the classic form of Filipino love song developed at the end of the 19th century. The melancholic passion and yearning for a loved one was actually a covert expression for one’s patriotic love and the desire for freedom during the fight for independence from Spain’s centuries of colonization of the Philippines.Fernandez has had no formal music training but has been performing live music for the last 30 years. His musical venues included stints in New York City, Atlantic City, as well as Philadelphia — where he played the bass for cover bands. He learned to play the guitar, like most kids in Manila (Philippines), figuring out the tablature by aural emulation. His list of guitar heroes includes Earl Klugh, Chet Atkins, Greg Allman and Antonio Carlos Jobim.Marie Alonzo, born in the Philippines and raised in Rome, Italy, received her MFA in dance from NYU and earned her doctorate in arts education from Columbia, where she has taught and also presented papers on the development and aesthetics of Asian American Modern Dance. While in New York, Alonzo trained in workshops with Lar Lubovitch, Paul Taylor, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane, and Pilobolus. She has performed and toured with HT Chen & Dancers, Asian American Dance Theater, Hikari Baba Dancers, and Second Avenue Dance Company, and performed works by Don Redlich, Ruby Shang, Cliff Keuter, and Rozalind Newman. Her own work has also been produced by the Mulberry Street Theatre in New York City.She is on the faculty of Princeton Day School and Princeton Dance and Theater Studio.Also on the “I’ll Have” program: Catherine Weiss, originally from France and now living in West Windsor with her husband and two young sons, will dance in a work by Kim Leary. I’ll Have What She’s Having, YWCA Princeton, Yvonne Theater, Rider University, 609-497-2100. Saturday, March 11, 8 p.m. and Sunday, March 12, 2 p.m.