What do you think?
Rate this book
The Day the Dancers Came: Selected Prose Works
THE DAY THE DANCERS CAME opens with the title story, which won the Philippines Free Press annual short story contest in 1966. The characters are familiar to readers of Bienvenido N. Santos: the hurt, homesick men of YOU LOVELY PEOPLE; the people back home of Tondo, of Bicol, and thus of BROTHER, MY BROTHER and THE VOLCANO; and the confused characters of VILLA MAGDALENA who bear burdens of guilt, and come and go on unscheduled flights to lonely places. And yet the range is different, the insights are new, and humanity here wears other familiar faces.
- GenresShort Stories
212 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
15 people are currently reading
335 people want to read
About the author
Bienvenido N. Santos
21 books51 followersBienvenido N. Santos was born in Tondo, Manila, on March 22, 1911. When Santos started school, the Philippines was already a colony of the United States and instruction was in English. In his early attempts at creative writing, Santos developed an ear for three kinds of communication: Pampango in the songs his mother sang at home; English in the poems and stories his teacher read at school; and Tagalog in the street life of the Tondo slums.
Santos left for America in September 1941 as a pensionado (scholar) of the Philippine Commonwealth government. Thirty years old and an established short story writer in English at home, he enrolled at the University of Illinois in the master's program in English. When war broke out in December, he found himself an exile in America, cut off from his homeland and his wife and three daughters he left behind. The heartbreak of this separation during his first sojourn in America is crucial to Santos's development as a writer.
Exile defined the central theme of his fiction from then on. In the summer of 1942, he studied at Columbia University with Whit Burnett, the founder of Story magazine, who published his first fiction in America. After studying Basic English with I.A. Richards at Harvard in 1946, Santos returned home to a country rebuilding from the ruins of war. He came back to America in 1958 as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. His first two novels, Villa Magdalena and The Volcano, written under a Rockefeller grant and a Guggenheim fellowship, were published in Manila in 1965, the year Santos won the Philippine Republic Cultural Heritage Award for Literature.
In 1972, Santos and his wife Beatriz were on their way to the Philippines to "stay home for good," when news of the declaration of martial law reached them in San Francisco. The new regime banned The Praying Man, his novel about government corruption, and he was once again exiled from his home. From 1973 to 1982, Santos was Distinguished Writer-In-Residence at Wichita State University. In 1976 he became a U.S. citizen. His short story, "Immigration Blues," won the best fiction award given by New Letters magazine in 1977. In 1980, the University of Washington Press published Scent of Apples, his first and only book of short stories to appear in the United States. The next year it won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Santos died at his home in Albay on January 7, 1996.
Santos's stories can be grouped into three literary periods. The first period, the prewar years in the Philippines (1930-1940) are set in the fictive Sulucan slums of his Tondo childhood and the rural towns and villages in the foothills of Mayon volcano in Albay, where Santos married Beatriz Nidea, started his family, and built his house. These stories are in the collections Brother, My Brother and Dwell in the Wilderness. Santos's exile in America during the war years produced stories set in Chicago, Washington, New York, and other cities, where he lectured extensively for the Philippine Commonwealth government in exile. You, Lovely People, The Day the Dancers Came, and Scent of Apples belong to this period. In the postwar years Santos set his stories in different places as he commuted between the Philippines and America. These years mark a period of maturation and experimentation, and a shifting away from the short story to the novel form.
His use of memory--or, rather, a fictionalized memory--evokes empathy for his characters. A variation of this technique is Santos's use of other "I" narrators, like the Pinoy old-timer Ambo, he of the trembling hands ("The Door" and "The Faraway Summer"), or Tingting, the tennis player, in the San Francisco novel. But even with the voices of Ambo and Tingting, the stories are told from within, as if Santos had been inside them and felt their pain. Santos believed it was important for a writer to feel compassion for his characters: "When you have cr
Santos left for America in September 1941 as a pensionado (scholar) of the Philippine Commonwealth government. Thirty years old and an established short story writer in English at home, he enrolled at the University of Illinois in the master's program in English. When war broke out in December, he found himself an exile in America, cut off from his homeland and his wife and three daughters he left behind. The heartbreak of this separation during his first sojourn in America is crucial to Santos's development as a writer.
Exile defined the central theme of his fiction from then on. In the summer of 1942, he studied at Columbia University with Whit Burnett, the founder of Story magazine, who published his first fiction in America. After studying Basic English with I.A. Richards at Harvard in 1946, Santos returned home to a country rebuilding from the ruins of war. He came back to America in 1958 as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. His first two novels, Villa Magdalena and The Volcano, written under a Rockefeller grant and a Guggenheim fellowship, were published in Manila in 1965, the year Santos won the Philippine Republic Cultural Heritage Award for Literature.
In 1972, Santos and his wife Beatriz were on their way to the Philippines to "stay home for good," when news of the declaration of martial law reached them in San Francisco. The new regime banned The Praying Man, his novel about government corruption, and he was once again exiled from his home. From 1973 to 1982, Santos was Distinguished Writer-In-Residence at Wichita State University. In 1976 he became a U.S. citizen. His short story, "Immigration Blues," won the best fiction award given by New Letters magazine in 1977. In 1980, the University of Washington Press published Scent of Apples, his first and only book of short stories to appear in the United States. The next year it won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Santos died at his home in Albay on January 7, 1996.
Santos's stories can be grouped into three literary periods. The first period, the prewar years in the Philippines (1930-1940) are set in the fictive Sulucan slums of his Tondo childhood and the rural towns and villages in the foothills of Mayon volcano in Albay, where Santos married Beatriz Nidea, started his family, and built his house. These stories are in the collections Brother, My Brother and Dwell in the Wilderness. Santos's exile in America during the war years produced stories set in Chicago, Washington, New York, and other cities, where he lectured extensively for the Philippine Commonwealth government in exile. You, Lovely People, The Day the Dancers Came, and Scent of Apples belong to this period. In the postwar years Santos set his stories in different places as he commuted between the Philippines and America. These years mark a period of maturation and experimentation, and a shifting away from the short story to the novel form.
His use of memory--or, rather, a fictionalized memory--evokes empathy for his characters. A variation of this technique is Santos's use of other "I" narrators, like the Pinoy old-timer Ambo, he of the trembling hands ("The Door" and "The Faraway Summer"), or Tingting, the tennis player, in the San Francisco novel. But even with the voices of Ambo and Tingting, the stories are told from within, as if Santos had been inside them and felt their pain. Santos believed it was important for a writer to feel compassion for his characters: "When you have cr
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 31, 2013
Bienvenido Santos' The Day The Dancers Came is not the kind of book you would read as a past-time outside of school, or rather, it is to me (and also some of my classmates). Our English teacher first having introduced the book to us as required reading, it was nothing but added expense on my part. It was especially a hassle to search for said book-- apparently it was only available in Fairview, Crossings, and another branch of National Bookstore which my memory has failed to cling on to. Nevertheless, it was worth it.
Say whatever you want about Bienvenido Santos, you cannot deny he has talent in writing. The ten short stories in this collection are enough evidence. Although slightly wordy, The Day The Dancers Came was a beautiful masterpiece, an obra maestra Santos weaved. It did not promise, nor fulfil, happy endings, because it is set in real life, and reality itself is a reminder that there are no happy endings for all endings are bittersweet. You live and then you fade, you have dreams and these dreams slip out of your fingers inevitably as time consumes it. I, as a mere student born after the war, cannot fully appreciate and comprehend the harshness of war, the bitterness of life, and the cruelty of dreams, but I am given a peek as I read.
The downside of this book was the execution-- it was beautiful, yes, but at times, it felt as if you were not into the story itself. At some parts, you had to stop and reread because, in Filipino terms, nakakalula ang lalim ng salita subalit walang aksyon ang nagaganap. (The pace of the story was far too slow and wordy, basically.) Despite these, it was still a great read.
The Day The Dancers Came makes you think and reflect, a perfect "school book", much like a classic version of John Green books. You read it and as you put it down, you are left with questions that will probably never be answered by even Stephen Hawkings or Albert Einstein. My real rating for this book: 4.5.
Say whatever you want about Bienvenido Santos, you cannot deny he has talent in writing. The ten short stories in this collection are enough evidence. Although slightly wordy, The Day The Dancers Came was a beautiful masterpiece, an obra maestra Santos weaved. It did not promise, nor fulfil, happy endings, because it is set in real life, and reality itself is a reminder that there are no happy endings for all endings are bittersweet. You live and then you fade, you have dreams and these dreams slip out of your fingers inevitably as time consumes it. I, as a mere student born after the war, cannot fully appreciate and comprehend the harshness of war, the bitterness of life, and the cruelty of dreams, but I am given a peek as I read.
The downside of this book was the execution-- it was beautiful, yes, but at times, it felt as if you were not into the story itself. At some parts, you had to stop and reread because, in Filipino terms, nakakalula ang lalim ng salita subalit walang aksyon ang nagaganap. (The pace of the story was far too slow and wordy, basically.) Despite these, it was still a great read.
The Day The Dancers Came makes you think and reflect, a perfect "school book", much like a classic version of John Green books. You read it and as you put it down, you are left with questions that will probably never be answered by even Stephen Hawkings or Albert Einstein. My real rating for this book: 4.5.
April 24, 2020
All of the stories (yes, including the play) in this book deal with rootlessness, wandering, homelessness, and nostalgia. It manages to capture the Filipino-American experience in the 1950s: workers trying to find a place among the whites; Filipinos stubbornly sticking with each other; migrants trying and failing to remember the "old country". It has a very romantic and wistful tone, almost as if everything is one big dream or memory. Although the tone helps in building the themes of each story, it also backfires by making me sleepy 🤣 I kinda missed a LOT of details because the writing style feels like drifting on clouds.
I'm surprised that I love the book as a whole. I empathize a lot with the lost and listless characters because I, too, grew up struggling with being Filipino in a foreign land. Tapping into those familiar feelings eased my hostility towards the stalwarts of PH literary classics. I was prepared to dislike it because Bienvenido Santos is a staple in Philippine Lit (in English) classes, and I had no idea why I bought this in the first place. Though it's not something I would RAVE about in literary papers, I'm still happy that I spent my time well.
Favorite stories: The Day the Dancers Came (titular piece), The Contender, The Vision of Sir, Quicker with Arrows
Least liked: The Long Way Home, Footnote to a Laundry List
I'm surprised that I love the book as a whole. I empathize a lot with the lost and listless characters because I, too, grew up struggling with being Filipino in a foreign land. Tapping into those familiar feelings eased my hostility towards the stalwarts of PH literary classics. I was prepared to dislike it because Bienvenido Santos is a staple in Philippine Lit (in English) classes, and I had no idea why I bought this in the first place. Though it's not something I would RAVE about in literary papers, I'm still happy that I spent my time well.
Favorite stories: The Day the Dancers Came (titular piece), The Contender, The Vision of Sir, Quicker with Arrows
Least liked: The Long Way Home, Footnote to a Laundry List
January 25, 2024
Uneasiness, uncertainty, being at the peripheries of war, both spatial and temporal. Going away, or being away, and the threat of losing what you want to come back to.
I give 4 stars to the pieces I liked the most:
The Enchanted Plant
- and he would feel his fingers sinking into her flesh and it would be again, as it had always been since that time in the shuddering house of the dead.
The Contender
- Yet when the true darkness finally settled, how would he know, how could he tell, when voices started talking to him, which was real?
- With the darkness there was a last gift, like left-over grace. Now he understood a lot of things that were not clear to him before. In the long night, the voices were not only clearer but kinder.
I give 4 stars to the pieces I liked the most:
The Enchanted Plant
- and he would feel his fingers sinking into her flesh and it would be again, as it had always been since that time in the shuddering house of the dead.
The Contender
- Yet when the true darkness finally settled, how would he know, how could he tell, when voices started talking to him, which was real?
- With the darkness there was a last gift, like left-over grace. Now he understood a lot of things that were not clear to him before. In the long night, the voices were not only clearer but kinder.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 13, 2023
“The Day the Dancers Came” — 4 stars
January 17, 2020
Apart from the The Day the Dancers Came, I have already read two or three more of the stories here, as they came out in The Scent of Apples, my first book by Bienvenido Santos. The rereading somehow, packs more of a punch now.
I've come to associate Ben Santos's short stories with scenes of mid to upper middle class Filipinos in wartime America, adrift in melancholy loneliness, alienation, helplessness, uselessness. Apart from three or so that deviate from this theme, all stories follow my expectations, and I find these to be the stories that I empathize with the most.
I've come to associate Ben Santos's short stories with scenes of mid to upper middle class Filipinos in wartime America, adrift in melancholy loneliness, alienation, helplessness, uselessness. Apart from three or so that deviate from this theme, all stories follow my expectations, and I find these to be the stories that I empathize with the most.
Read
October 4, 2010love this story. :)
June 25, 2015
"No, I must not be sentimental."
September 14, 2016
Maybe it's time for me to read more literary classics! :)
September 18, 2016
want to read
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 14, 2018
Bienvenido Santos plots the historic events of the Filipinos during the time of the Japan ruling over the Filipinos. Each story plots different times and different genres besides history. And each story also has different deep morals. Once you read this book, this book will have a place in you that you wouldn't forget it.
Read
December 7, 2018not good at all
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews