A free-wheeling conversation at the Sports Lounge of the Manila Polo Club was a most welcome diversion right after the holidays and a series of balls that required guests to dress up.

This one informal lunch, relaxed and carefree, with hardly a reason to impress the people at the next table (how, tell me, does one impress the members of this most exclusive of clubs?) gave us, Kathleen “Maymay” Lior Liechtenstein, Ping Valencia and myself a big break from the rigors of formal dining, and yet, it was refined and pleasant all the way.

To start with, ballet was our topic because Maymay is the president of the 55-year-old ballet performing group and organization, Ballet Philippines. She has stood at the helm of this venerable arts and culture organization only since 2019, but her involvement as a trustee had been 20 years earlier.

‘Limang Daan’

At the time of our lunch, Maymay was looking forward to the forthcoming Women’s Month presentation of Ballet Philippines Limang Daan, a full length 2024 ballet   production in which, according to the official announcement,  “awarded filmmaker and writer Moira Lang illuminates the struggles of Filipino women in a narrative that travels through the country’s 500-year history. Moira’s cross-generational heroines mirror one another in their journeys through pain, struggle and strife. Set both in the past and present, these stories woven through dance, serve as a vignette to the beauty, wisdom, and fortitude of Filipino women.”

In its earlier incarnation, Limang Daan was a short video that was done by Balet Philippines in collaboration with the Salcedo Auctions, one that covered 500 years of cross-cultural encounters in the Philippines arts and culture

As of press time, Limang Daan’ world premier as a ballet masterpiece had been shown, while two more shows today, 9 March and tomorrow, 10 March have been scheduled in the Theatre at Solaire.

As we were about to enjoy our appetizers of gambas al ajillo and beef tenderloin salpicao, I asked Maymay what her complete name was, confusing as it seemed to me, and Maymay obliged. “It’s Kathleen Nolasco Lior Liechtenstein. She added the Lior, she explained, after she married Mr. Liechtenstein whose first name is Lior. “Whenever I asked for an appointment at the parlor and gave them my name, they couldn’t spell the long Liechtenstein so I thought I’d tell them this is Cathlyn Lior, and life has been much easier thereafter.”

Her lawyer, Lorna Kapunan, pointed out, though, that she had to include her other names “so there won’t be legal complications.”

Ilonggo and Ilocano roots

It must be a lucky name, I offered, and she said, “Darling, we got used to it.”

The Nolascos, her maiden family, “were from Ilocos,” she explained. “My  mom is solid Ilonggo, but my father is from Ilocos. Among our relatives in the North are the Abadillas of Banna, Ilocos.” Close kin is Rolando Abadilla, who was her guardian when she was single and a college student. She attended Assumption College and later, Ateneo de Davao University where she took up Mass Communication.   

Right after college, she worked as an advertising executive at RK Davis and Associates. “That was my first love. Then I joined the Paper Industries Corporation of the Philippines where I headed its public relations department.”

“I worked under Narvaez,and Salazar and I handled PICOP of which they were Vice President and President, respectively” she shared. “My beautiful office was painted all white. I often traveled to Bislig. It was a fabulous job.”

Playing hard-to-get

Next, she married Lior Lichtenstein. “He would come home and say ‘Mai, let’s have dinner in this restaurant. What could I say? I had been there, I just had lunch there.’”

They met in the advertising agency. The manager was also married to a foreigner. “She played hard-to-get,” Ping volunteered, herself an active volunteer of Ballet Philippines.

Lior and Maymay have two children – a daughter, Lauren, who is a surgeon; and a son, Phillip, a banker-turned-businessman.

After seeing that she was not earning enough in her job, Lior told his wife, “I will give you a business. And he got me settled in fragrances, which was my first business.”

“She was in perfumery,” said Ping, who was a top fashion model in the 1970s. “Her company, an exclusive agent for Caeibou, produced and sold aromatics and fragrances  for 30 years.”

“I am now retired,” Mai Mai clarified.

Food and family

Although conscious of our figures, our table groaned with food. Which was keeping in style with Maymay’s brand of hospitality. “My family life revolves around food,” she said with a smile all over her face. “My son was telling his friend, ‘As I can remember, when I was three years old, my mom and I would travel all over the world and she would drag me to two or three restaurants just because she needed to be able to taste the food there.”

“She hasn’t stopped doing that, eating wherever she had read or had been told that the food is good,” Ping confided. “And she just doesn’t drive several miles, she flies, she flies to wherever.”

Maymay alluded to her interest in delicious food to “my growing up days in Bacolod where everyone ate good food. My grandma, Lola Troling, would host big parties and she served festive fare, the usual relleno and lumpia. But even on Sundays and weekdays, the kitchen was always buzzing with cooking. But I never saw my grandmother standing right in front of the stove. I just remember her giving instructions. She would help slice ingredients but she never actually fried food. On Sundays, she would bake. Like she would roll the dough with a fork. So, I learned how to bake from her. I learned how to make angel food cake from her. And we would fold the cream to make icing and then pour sugar to it.”

Concerts at the town plaza

But if she was interested in the culinary arts, she, too, was fascinated with the arts. “It was very normal that a hacienda would have cultural fare. Summer time, an orchestra would play during fiestas at the plaza. There were all kinds of performances.”

Ballet came into her consciousness when she was in grade school. “I was reading a book in the library and that was the first time I came across Anna Pavlova. She was performing the Dying Swan. They say that there are moments in one’s life when something magical happens and it sticks with you. So, that was life-changing for me because after I read it and I was fascinated with her dancing on the page, I became enamored with ballet forever.”

Fast forward to her adulthood, she met Maan Hontiveros, for the longest time the president of Ballet Philippines. “She asked me to join the Ballet Philippines board. She was aware that I was actively going around the ballet circuit. I watched ballet regularly.

Always in the first row

“My kids were like three and five. I remember I would drag them to watch at the CCP when they were that age.  We were always in the first row. And they would behave well because I would tell them that if they watched closely without moving, they would understand the story better. And who knows, the characters might come to life. And they always anticipated that moment.

“That’s why CCP was their childhood.  We would travel in December. Summertime was not ballet time around the world. Everybody was in a hiatus. I mean the big companies closed. They start waking up around September. All over the world, the ballet season started in September. And since they were watching ballets and the operas, they did not end up being.

“To see all these concerts and performances, we had to travel. And these gave them a very good soul because, ballet, for instance, is not just about sceneries on stage. It’s about how a ballerina or a danseur can move and make the music move your soul. So not a single performance can be the same.

“So many people would say, ‘Ay Nutcracker na naman. But it’s not the same.”

Travel has brought her to the leading cultural centers of the world. “One time I was in La Scala and there was this famous, famous ballerina. And it was Swan Lake. and I just ended up crying.

“But giving so much of your time to ballet can be exhausting. So, when Maan knew that I was into it, she approached me to be a trustee of the Ballet Philippines board.

“This was, like, 20 years ago. And I said, ‘Yes, why not?’ And then, after 10 years, she offered the presidency. But I wasn’t ready because I was the president of several organizations and I sat on eight other boards at the time. And then on the 50th season of Ballet Philippines, I accepted it. That was just before the Covid. It was March 2019.”

Ping recounted, “We were seated on the first row and she wasn’t telling anybody anything. And then I was with Lior. And Lauren, I think, was there also. And then, her husband, Lior, said something like, ‘This is going to be your life for the next  so  and so number of years. So I looked at her and I asked her, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘Shh,’ and  Lauren, or was it Phillip, who said, ‘Mom’s the president of Ballet Philippines.’ What? I was surprised but I just knew it was going to happen sooner or later.”

“The board had no choice,” Ping exclaimed. “There was no one else capable.”

It had been quite a journey. So many developments had taken place since she became president. The board brought in a new artistic director.

“We were asking how we could make our vision more optimistic. How can we make it top of mind when ballet in Asia is talked about? It was Dedes Zobel who said, ‘We must have a repertoire and training that is worldwide and we must search high and low, everywhere in the world. She and our chair, Tony Boy Cojuangco, agreed. He said, ‘Yes, we will do that.’”

I then asked Ping how Maymay is as a president. “She has the foresight,” Ping emphasized. She realized the need to build up an audience. It is difficult to have everyone come to the opening of a show, all these society people and the culturati.”

The transition from pre-Covid to post-Covid had not been easy. “But what was even more difficult was the transition from the stage to the web,” Ping stressed.

“Everybody folded up, but Maymay refused to fold up. So, she sat down with everyone. She sat down with the board. And then she looked at me and said, ‘Let’s make a webpage. Neither she nor I knew how to make a webpage. We ended up exchanging ideas up to four in the morning, and then we would wake up at 8 a.m. because there was a meeting we had to attend. That was every day for the next three months, from March to May in 2020 when covid was at its height and we didn’t know how to deal with it. We could not even see each other. We had to do it through the Zoom. You know how difficult tat was?

Maymay said, “That was the turning point for Ballet Philippines because if not for that, it would have perished. It was the only ballet company that was on cyber space.”

Captain of a ship

Ping likened the experience to Maymay being the captain of a ship. “Just think that you’re on a galleon. And that there’s a storm and you don’t even know where you’re going, you don’t even know if you’re going to survive. But you must be a good captain of the ship. Don’t let it ever sink. Don’t let it ever be sabotaged. Because of piracy and everything.”

Financial resources, given the economic crunch, were also difficult to come by. The corporate donors had to stop giving and take care of their people. Again, as in the past, the board members came to the rescue. “They’re industrialists and philanthropists. And these are people who don’t do it halfway, so they gave their all to ensure the survival of Ballet Philippines,” Ping narrated.

But it wasn’t just financial resources that the board generously gave. Their expertise and their suggestions, too. “Dedes Zobel would always call to discuss things. Even when she was abroad. She would share her ideas. Like we wanted to have a Ballet Philippines that was not only inclusive but also a collaboration with the other arts. Tony Boy Cojuangco, our chairman, was all in agreement. And so were Lorna, Doctor Cuanang, Maan, Amanda Luym, Cora Corpuz and everyone.

“So, we joined forces with Lisa Macuja to come up with a united front. It was the height of Covid and the other ballet dancers were not doing anything. Ballet Philippines put up a group with Philippine Ballet Theatre, and Ballet Manila, and we trained their dancers with us with compensation. We called it GAP, for the Ballet Philippines Guest Artist Program. We conducted masterclasses, which were not just in training. If you looked hard enough, you saw that we were able to get those superstars to be with us. Lisa Macuja was very supportive and Ballet Philippines Artistic Director Mikhail “Misha” Martynyuk was the first to come forward and volunteer. He got in touch with all his friends.”

Reaching out to the indigenous groups

A favorite project of Maymay’s is Ballet Philippines’ outreach program. “We are covering the isolated barangays. We had just been with the Aetas of Zambales. The whole point is they are exposed to all kinds of media, Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram and television, and they only get what is commercial,” MaiMai laments. “So, I said, why not go to them and expose them to the higher art forms?”

Another memorable visit was in Kalinga-Apayao. “The response was very heartwarming and incredibly welcoming. And we made it clear that we were not there to disrupt or to corrupt their culture, but really to integrate and expand and expose them, inspire them of what is there. Because ballet is actually a higher form of discipline. So, when you are in ballet, your discipline has to be more than what you can give. Kasi all the senses are working in ballet. The whole body.”

At the time of our lunch, next in line were the Mangyans of Mindoro. “We have also lined up the Tausug tribe in the south. What we do is we talk to their elders for respect. And then the LGUs.  But this is not only through the LGUs because you need the people in the community to be comfortable with you. We coordinate properly.  

“And then our program is we show to them what the positions of ballet. We dance to them what is ballet. And then we ask them to show us what their dances are. And then they teach us also. It’s an integration. And they dance with us in their dance form.

Grateful for the right people

There is no stopping Maymay who has looked beyond the big performance halls in the cities. That she did not rest and stop working during the worst times of the worldwide epidemic did not surprise her friend, Ping, at all. “If there’s something that I can say about Maymay, she’s a doer. She doesn’t just think it, she does it. She’s a doer. So, you know, sometimes it comes to a point where we’re having a meeting, and then she says, ‘What if?’ And then we all go and do it because she knows how to lead us to action.”

The long lunch went on and on, and as we were having dessert, Maymay looked happy to have shared her life in ballet. Gratitude showed all over her lovely face, smiling, at the same time wistful. “I have had the tremendous support of my husband, Lior, and our children, and the Board of Trustees. They have been behind me all the way. I think the Lord has always been very, very supportive of what I’m doing in life. He gave me all the right people to be with.”