BENJIE TOLEDO WAS PERHAPS the best-looking male ballet dancer ever. But not too many of us living in Manila had seen him again after he left town in the ’80s.

Watching Roberto Bolle, premier danseur of La Scala in Milan, reminded me of him. I mused that perhaps Benjie might have reached Bolle’s stature had he passionately pursued a dancer’s track all his life. He could also have reverted to his full name, the more elegant Ruben Toledo instead of the playful “Benjie,” and he would have made quite a package.

He was, after all not just blessed with bearing and looks, but also with an inborn bent for dance that translated into natural musicality, spretzzatura, if you will – executing something difficult with apparent ease.

Regal proportions

His proportions were ideal “prince” material – a good chest, a perfect V-shaped torso, what looked like six-pack abs, long muscular legs, and most of all (for me, at least) a well-shaped posterior, that being behind him at the ballet barre could prove a trifle distracting, especially when doing a full port de bras – bending forward from the waist, arms in fifth, then reaching up, passing his perfectly shaped behind positioned in front of you, before going into a backbend.

I always found his feet a trifle dainty for his build, but they nevertheless closed in a clean fifth, leaving a neat space between the floor and a good arch. For a male dancer, his hands were lithe in a tender-macho sort of way. In all this he was graceful, perhaps because he was musical.

Despite his grace, Benjie was a full-blooded male, many times surrounded by women, some becoming his romantic interests, many his good friends for life. And when he later ventured successfully into modeling, his appearances on the ramp, like his dancing onstage, translated into a most attractive presence.

In the early ’80s, when 16-year-old Rebecca Rodriguez danced her first pas de deux, “Pas de deux for a Recorder” for the Manila Metropolis Ballet, it was Benjie whom Tony Fabella chose to partner her. Rebecca, who also has been long gone from Manila, is now a principal dancer for the Ohio Ballet.

Among Benjie’s other partners were LydLyd Gaston, Gina Mariano and Maribeth Roxas, now known as Elizabeth Roxas, dancing for the Alvin Ailey Dance Company.

In HK

For five years following his departure from Manila, Benjie was a principal dancer for the Hong Kong Ballet. It was here where singer Ding Mercado, then based in Hong Kong, saw Benjie’s performance in “Madame Butterfly,” which he described as beautiful and powerful.

It was also in Hong Kong where I first saw Benjie again after he had left Manila. Typically, it was he who called my hotel and made arrangements to meet up for dinner. Unlike the easygoing Benjie I knew in Manila, this Benjie was more purposeful, ambitious even, talking excitedly about his work, his plans, looking forward but at the same time hungry for news on friends back home.

I wouldn’t see him again until a few years later in New York, where he was in constant touch with singer Eugene Villaluz who was then living there.

Orphan

Even if Benjie was blessed with physical beauty, talent, a bright smile, a happy-go-lucky disposition and a likeable personality, many of us were aware, (but never spoke of it) that Benjie was an orphan with no real family ties to speak of.

When I met him, I knew him to be the ward of my ballet teachers, Fabella and Eddie Elejar. It was later that I learned: he had partly grown up at Hospicio de San José, abandoned there at age 4, with no other information on his origins but his mother’s name, Rosa.

Edna Vida, principal dancer of the CCP Dance Company (now Ballet Philippines) further related that Benjie was later transferred to a seminary in Bicol then returned to Manila where he studied at University of the East. It was during this period that a friend introduced him to Fabella who, along with Elejar, became his guardian and mentor, nurturing Benjie’s natural talent for dance.

Search mode

Even before he left the country, it seemed that Benjie was on search mode, determined to make something of himself, as Edna pointed out, if not in Manila, then elsewhere. The world of dance was not enough.

One summer, he directed and choreographed the provincial search for a nationwide beauty contest we were working on. Abroad, he ventured into producing shows, worked in a magazine, tried his hand at catering, worked in a department store, even became a physical therapist.

He was determined to make it, especially in New York. He got into anything and everything, searching for that niche he could comfortably fit in. Or perhaps define his life. And even if people who loved him surrounded him, he had a seeming detachment and loneliness observed by close friends.

Unannounced

Last year, for the first time in 20-something years, Benjie came knocking at the door of the Elejar-Fabella household unannounced.

In the month he spent here, he wasted no time in contacting old friends. His visit coincided with the opening of a ballet at the CCP which I designed. We asked him to meet us at the CCP lobby, and on opening night, after so many years, there was Benjie, briskly walking toward me, Monette Garcia-Co and Sandy Hontiveros, a big smile plastered on his face, still fit, trim and beautiful, and save for a few telltale crow’s feet, at age 52 looking better than any 25-year-old.

There were bear hugs all around, and for the first time, I admitted to him my desire of long ago to pinch his posterior from my post behind him at the ballet barre 20 years ago, to which he gamely stuck his behind at me and laughed, saying, “O sige! Kurutin mo na (Okay, pinch it now)!”

There was a late night at Merck’s, and even a sleep-over at Gina Valenciano-Martinez’s house.

Baffling

Before his visit, Ding Mercado said Benjie had been e-mailing him about going into a business partnership with him here in Manila. He seemed to want to reconnect with his roots.

Edna noticed, too. He was, she said, “making a baffling pledge to the future, but this time he was in a big hurry… He wanted to do many things.”

While many of us had long gotten married and settled down, Benjie had not even come close to getting engaged up to that point. When Edna asked him why he never married despite his looks and caring disposition, he simply said, “I haven’t really found my soul mate.” In truth, perhaps Benjie could never commit or give 100 percent to a relationship for reasons only he could, or maybe could not, fathom.

Ordeal

Barely a month after that visit, e-mail upon forwarded e-mail from New York poured in – Benjie had been diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer, metastasizing into his kidney, adrenals and skull.

There were donations, prayers, prayers and yet more donations and pictures of Benjie with all sorts of friends. The ordeal was mercifully short. In seven months, after a brave show of positive strength, Benjie was gone.

But the story doesn’t end there. Like his life journey, when friends had to put together the missing areas of Benjie’s life, it all came together 40 days after his passing, withmany of his friends, some flying in from New York, attended Benjie’s memorial at the chapel of Sanctuario de San Antonio in Forbes Park.

In his final days, he admitted to a close friend that he could never love completely because of his fear of being abandoned.

Now, ironically in his illness, Benjie became a great source of inspiration to those around him, reaching out in love by praying for them and even leading other patients and hospital staff at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in New York in prayer, offering up his suffering to God, acknowledging his fate and remaining faithful till the end.

Close friends Orly and Leah Bartolome relate how he had accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior, finally realizing that he had a Father awaiting him in a home where he would spend eternity.

And then as a bonus, another close friend to whom he gave instructions to cremate his remains and to whom he entrusted his ashes, offered to give him a crypt at San Antonio as his final resting place. Benjie cried like a child, saying, “At last I will have a home.”

As the pure voices of the children’s choir of Hospicio de San José sang the strains of The Lord’s Prayer: “...on earth as it is in Heaven…” we all knew that the wandering dancer had really found home in heaven as on earth.