05/18/2009
By Greg Mellen, Staff Writer
Long Beach Press Telegram (California, USA)
LONG BEACH - Sophiline Cheam Shapiro only spends part of her time in the United States and Long Beach these days, but she still carries clout.
The artistic director for the Khmer Arts Academy has been selected by the National Endowment of the Arts as one of 11 artists honored as a 2009 National Heritage Fellow.
The $25,000 award recognizes artistic excellence and support and contributions to folk and ethnic arts.
Previous Heritage Fellows include bluesman B.B. King, Cajun fiddler and composer Michael Doucet, cowboy poet Wally McRae, gospel and soul singer Mavis Staples, and bluegrass musician Bill Monroe.
Prumsodun Ok, a dance instructor at the Khmer Arts Academy in Long Beach and the curator of its salon series of Asian performing arts, was thrilled to see his mentor honored.
To Ok, it is the tutelage of Shapiro and her willingness to use Khmer dance as a vehicle to other forms that sets her apart.
"She has been so pivotal in my growth," said Ok, who studied dance in Cambodia under her. "She opened her home to me in much the way my mother opened her home to me. (Shapiro) opened her arts to me."
Considering that classical Khmer dance was nearly lost in the Cambodian holocaust, it makes Shapiro's support of the form and its rebirth all the more important to artists like Ok.
"To see her being recognized for her work, the way it has developed and to see the way she has been able to show why it should be preserved, valued and sustained," Ok said, was exciting. "I am very proud to be part of her artistic lineage."
Ok is extending her work with the ongoing salon series that has made a variety of Southern and Southeast Asian performing arts available to the public.
Craig Watson, executive director of the Arts Council for Long Beach which provides grants to the Khmer Arts Academy in Long Beach, was thrilled to see a local honored.
"It's quite an elite honor," said Watson, who said the award reminds him that his organization needs to keep looking to promote ethnic art.
"The native and folk arts are at the depth of of our culture," he said. "If we live in the most diverse community in the country then our support should be the most diverse in the country."
A survivor of the Cambodian genocide, Shapiro was among the first generation of dancers in the wake of the Khmer Rouge regime to attend the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
She was also a member of the school's classical dance faculty and performed internationally.
She emigrated to the United States in 1991 and taught classical dance in the Southland before co-founding the Khmer Arts Academy in Long Beach in 2002.
Shapiro has shifted much of her energy and focus back to Cambodia, where she established the Khmer Arts Theater in Takmao province, about 15 kilometers south of Phnom Penh.
There, at a lavish theater called the Center for Culture and Vipassana, she directs and choreographs for a professional troupe of dancers who are graduates of the Royal University.
It's a big shift for a woman who, less than six years ago, was teaching inner-city youth in Long Beach in a cramped space at the United Cambodian Community building as well as conducting sessions in her living room.
Shapiro has received international acclaim for her work. Pamina Devi, Shapiro's Cambodian interpretation of Mozart's Magic Flute premiered in Vienna in August 2006 at the Schonbrunn Palace Theatre.
greg.mellen@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1291
The artistic director for the Khmer Arts Academy has been selected by the National Endowment of the Arts as one of 11 artists honored as a 2009 National Heritage Fellow.
The $25,000 award recognizes artistic excellence and support and contributions to folk and ethnic arts.
Previous Heritage Fellows include bluesman B.B. King, Cajun fiddler and composer Michael Doucet, cowboy poet Wally McRae, gospel and soul singer Mavis Staples, and bluegrass musician Bill Monroe.
Prumsodun Ok, a dance instructor at the Khmer Arts Academy in Long Beach and the curator of its salon series of Asian performing arts, was thrilled to see his mentor honored.
To Ok, it is the tutelage of Shapiro and her willingness to use Khmer dance as a vehicle to other forms that sets her apart.
"She has been so pivotal in my growth," said Ok, who studied dance in Cambodia under her. "She opened her home to me in much the way my mother opened her home to me. (Shapiro) opened her arts to me."
Considering that classical Khmer dance was nearly lost in the Cambodian holocaust, it makes Shapiro's support of the form and its rebirth all the more important to artists like Ok.
"To see her being recognized for her work, the way it has developed and to see the way she has been able to show why it should be preserved, valued and sustained," Ok said, was exciting. "I am very proud to be part of her artistic lineage."
Ok is extending her work with the ongoing salon series that has made a variety of Southern and Southeast Asian performing arts available to the public.
Craig Watson, executive director of the Arts Council for Long Beach which provides grants to the Khmer Arts Academy in Long Beach, was thrilled to see a local honored.
"It's quite an elite honor," said Watson, who said the award reminds him that his organization needs to keep looking to promote ethnic art.
"The native and folk arts are at the depth of of our culture," he said. "If we live in the most diverse community in the country then our support should be the most diverse in the country."
A survivor of the Cambodian genocide, Shapiro was among the first generation of dancers in the wake of the Khmer Rouge regime to attend the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
She was also a member of the school's classical dance faculty and performed internationally.
She emigrated to the United States in 1991 and taught classical dance in the Southland before co-founding the Khmer Arts Academy in Long Beach in 2002.
Shapiro has shifted much of her energy and focus back to Cambodia, where she established the Khmer Arts Theater in Takmao province, about 15 kilometers south of Phnom Penh.
There, at a lavish theater called the Center for Culture and Vipassana, she directs and choreographs for a professional troupe of dancers who are graduates of the Royal University.
It's a big shift for a woman who, less than six years ago, was teaching inner-city youth in Long Beach in a cramped space at the United Cambodian Community building as well as conducting sessions in her living room.
Shapiro has received international acclaim for her work. Pamina Devi, Shapiro's Cambodian interpretation of Mozart's Magic Flute premiered in Vienna in August 2006 at the Schonbrunn Palace Theatre.
greg.mellen@presstelegram.com, 562-499-1291
4 comments:
to all KI readers,
please beware, Soy Sopheap of DAP news is an imposter. He's a CPP member and Hun Sen's "Ass Kisser on CTN!" DAP is owned by him and secretly funded by the CPP gang. DAP is located next door to Phnom Penh City Hall - which is now sold to CamKo Company.
KI Media should stop posting DAP "BS" propagada news!
6:38 AM
Anonymous said...
6:38 AM You're so right! Ah Soy Sopheap is just a talking parrot of CPP with no ethics as a journalist at all. His news is full of superstitious nonsense bullshits. Only those twits in primary schools believe that this story is true.
Wake up chumps, U khmers live in stone age for too damn long!
8:02 AM
Lost time to read your comments.
Ki readers have more brain than you, fool above!
Leurn of evil boy to defit them!
god bless our ancient, traditional khmer dances; they are the national, living treasure of cambodia.
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