The Bicol Express Theater Company (BETCo.), in partnership with the ADNU Creative Endeavors Council, staged Sayaw ni Nanay at the Ateneo de Naga University Gymnasium on August 15, 2026, with performances at 2:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.

Written and directed by Alcid O. Valencia, with Rammel C. Alano as musical director and Mark Vincent Santiago as choreographer, the musical tells the story of Martha: a mother, dancer, choreographer, and devotee of Ina, Our Lady of Peñafrancia, whose life has been shaped by years of sacrifice for her family.

But beneath the story of a mother providing for her children is another, quieter question:

What happens when years of sacrifice also create years of distance?

A Mother Who Spent Years Away

Martha spent much of her life away from her family in order to provide for her ailing husband and their three children.

After her husband's death, she continued working away from home, carrying the responsibility of supporting her children even as opportunities became more difficult to find.

Eventually, she returned to Bicol shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic.

What should have been a homecoming instead became another period of uncertainty.

With work and financial opportunities disappearing during the lockdown, Martha struggled with hunger, isolation, and the difficulty of meeting even her daily needs. At the same time, the emotional distance between her and her children continued to grow.

Her children eventually stayed with their aunt, leaving Martha alone.

For someone who had spent years building her life around providing for her family, that loneliness became one of the deepest conflicts of the story.

The Longing Behind the Dance

As Martha's condition became increasingly concerning to the people around her, her friends and neighbors reached out to her children.

Their return eventually forced the family to confront the years they had spent apart.

It was here that the children began to discover the life their mother had carried away from them—the financial struggles, hunger, grief, loneliness, and the sacrifices she had rarely allowed them to see.

They also learned about one of the deepest wounds Martha had carried: the loss of her first child.

And eventually, another truth emerged.

Martha's increasingly unusual behavior had become her desperate way of calling her children back to her.

It was not simply attention that she wanted.

She wanted to feel remembered by the family she had spent most of her life remembering first.

That revelation gives Sayaw ni Nanay one of its most painful contradictions.

Martha had spent years leaving home because she believed providing for her children was an expression of love. Yet those same years apart also created a distance that money and sacrifice alone could not repair.

The story asks its audience to look beyond the familiar image of the self-sacrificing mother and recognize something equally important:

A mother can spend her life caring for everyone else and still need to be cared for herself.

Faith in the Midst of Loneliness

Running alongside Martha's relationship with her children is her devotion to the Lord and to Ina, Our Lady of Peñafrancia.

For Martha, faith becomes a constant presence through grief, uncertainty, and isolation.

Her devotion does not erase the hardships she experiences. Instead, it becomes one of the ways she finds the strength to continue through them.

Set in a community where devotion to Ina is deeply woven into everyday life, the production allows Martha's faith to become more than a religious element within the story.

It becomes part of how she understands suffering, hope, family, and the possibility of finding her way back.

And because Martha is also a dancer, some of what she cannot fully communicate through words finds expression through movement.

In Sayaw ni Nanay, the dance becomes memory, prayer, pain, and longing at once.

Beyond the Stage

Following the performances, the production held a talkback session where members of the creative team discussed the experiences that shaped the work.

The conversation revealed that the themes of Sayaw ni Nanay—motherhood, sacrifice, grief, faith, family, and longing—were not distant ideas for the artists involved.

Members of the team shared how they found parts of their own experiences reflected in Martha's story.

That connection gave the audience another way of looking at the production.

The story onstage was fictional, but many of the emotions behind it were not.

For some, it was the experience of a parent sacrificing for a family. For others, it was separation, loss, faith, or the realization that the people closest to us may be carrying struggles we do not immediately see.

The talkback extended the story beyond the performance and turned the theatre into a space for reflection—not only about Martha, but about our own families and the things that sometimes remain unspoken between us.

The Things We Fail to See

Sayaw ni Nanay is ultimately not only a story about how much a mother can sacrifice.

It is also about what happens after the sacrifice.

Providing for a family does not always mean being able to remain physically present. Love does not always guarantee understanding. And sometimes, years of trying to give our loved ones everything can make it difficult for them to see what we ourselves have lost along the way.

Martha's story reminds us that behind the familiar image of a mother who gives everything is still a person who can become tired, lonely, afraid, and in need of the same love she has spent years giving others.

Perhaps that is where Sayaw ni Nanay speaks most clearly.

Sometimes, the people who have spent their lives taking care of us are also waiting for someone to ask if they need to be taken care of, too.