Christine

Viva Vigan Binatbatan Festival of the Arts celebrated from the last week of April to the primary week of May. It was originally the Feast of the Natives that started out on May 3, 1883, in line with the writings of Damaso King, a famous Vigan historian.     The Binatbatan festival originated from Vigan's abel weaving industry, which existed even before the Spanish colonized the Philippines. It comes from the word batbat, which is a bamboo stick used to separate cotton pods from a tall tree called kapas sanglay. The word "kapas" in kapas sanglay means "cotton" in Ilokano. This festival featured the binatbatan dance. This festival is a tribute to the Ilocanos of the Old. Binatbatan is an Ilocano dance that depicts the first step in the Abel Iloko weaving process. They use two 18-inch long bamboo sticks. The cotton pods have to beaten with these two bamboo sticks to separate the seeds from the fluff. Binatbatan is the beating process. That is why some other dancers