In the Treaty of Paris of 1898, Spain ceded the Philippines for 20 million dollars to the United States, then a young nation dreaming of international power. As the year turned, the Philippine revolution against Spain became the PhilippineAmerican War. By 1901, the Americans had defeated the Filipinos.
America introduced major changes in the political, economic, educational, and cultural sectors. In dance, America made its presence felt in bodabil dancing, ballet, modern dance, folk, and social dancing; that presence continues today, influencing the evolution of dance and media forms.
In the first years of this century, vaudeville entertained both Filipinos and American expatriates. Minstrel troupes sailed across the Pacific and did their buck-and-wing, clog or tap dances (both of Irish and African origin), soft-shoe, and straightforward jazz-and-blues routines. Other Americans introduced the skirt dance and pseudo-orientalia or exotic (also called aesthetic) dancing, enthralling audiences at the Teatro Zorrilla, Teatro Libertad, Teatro Paz (formerly the Orpheum), Teatro Filipino, Alhambra and Cosmopolitan, which had earlier hosted mostly sarswela. People later flocked to the new vaudeville novelty houses, such as the Savoy Nifties (later the Clover), the Rivoli (later the Tivoli), and the Serena (later the Lux).
The companies of Ratia and Carvajal continued to draw crowds to the Spanish zarzuela, while troupes led by Hermogenes Ilagan, Severino Reyes, and Florentino Ballecer packed Manila theaters with their original sarswela. Meanwhile, the sarswela flourished in the Ilocano, Bicol, Ilongo, and Cebuano regions. Like the comedia or moro-moro that lived on with its combat dance or batalla between Christians and Muslims, the sarswela took on more combative and subversive forms during the American and Japanese