83 Greeting the Virgin Mary: The Dancerly Attitudes of the Bati in Salubong Bryan Levina Viray A t dawn, on Easter Sunday, devotees from parts of the Philippines join the procession of the salubong, a reenactment of the frst meeting of Jesus Christ and his sorrowful mother, the Mater Dolorosa (Dolorosa), after His death on the cross. Easter Sunday completes the tripartite mystery of the central Catholic dogma: Christ has returned; He has resurrected from the dead. This is the main motivation to rejoice, hence the resumption of the Alleluia at the Eucharistic celebration or Holy Mass. What follows is the most dramatic aspect of the Easter celebration: the removal of the Dolorosa’s black veil by an angel as she/he wings above a make-shift kubol, an elevated box hanging at the center of the galilea constructed outdoors where the performance of the salubong takes place. The galilea is a four- corner structure made of bamboo that forms an apex with an opening in the middle. It is usually decorated with fresh fowers and green bamboo leaves. Filipino Catholics perform the salubong on the last day of the Holy Week and the frst Sunday of the Easter Season or at the cusp of the Lenten and Easter seasons. The Dolorosa or Virgin Mary is central to this performance, in contrast to other cultural performances during Holy Week in which the fgure of the sufering Christ is at the foreground. During the procession on Good Friday, the crowd accompanying the karosa (foat) of the Dolorosa is the largest, and in some towns, the most spectacular. In Angeles City in Central Luzon, for example, Dolorosa devotees form lines up to a kilometer long. In Gasan, Marinduque, in the Southern Tagalog region, trailing behind the karosa are women in black sutana, their heads covered with popua leaves. In other Southern Tagalog towns, young women sing each time