Judith Hamera: "An Answerability of Memory: "Saving" Khmer Classical Dance"
http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/61495714?access_key=key-28nytx36xpfto440y5k9
Showing posts with label Khmer Classical Ballet Dance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Khmer Classical Ballet Dance. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
“The Lives of Giants”: Cambodian dancers hit the stage for first OnStage performance of the season
04 October 2010
By Jake Landry
The College (Connecticut College, USA)
By Jake Landry
The College (Connecticut College, USA)
When watching a piece performed by the Khmer Institute, co-founded by Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, it’s easy to become tantalized by the graceful dance and melodic atmosphere that the Cambodian dance creates. Enjoying the performance is easy, but it is difficult to write a review.
The talent and grace of the Khmer Institute is undeniable and even someone with an untrained eye, such as myself, could tell that I was viewing years of practice and tradition. I cannot critique the performance further than to say it was a beautiful visual and auditory experience that left me with a sinking feeling of regret for the characters and a deep curiosity of Cambodian culture.
What struck me about this performance were two facts that seemed contradictory: the first was that this was a Cambodian dance ensemble, and the second was that they were performing a Hindu story. The little I remembered learning about Cambodia involved the Khmer Rouge, a terrible era in Cambodian history from 1975-1979 in which an estimated 1.7 to 2 million people were put to death in the “killing fields.”
The Khmer Rouge believed that they were going back to the glory of the Khmer empire, and in many ways tainted the word “Khmer” for any that are only familiar with modern Cambodian history. My first goal was to set out and discover the connection between Hinduism and Ancient Cambodia.
In his recent book Stories in Stone: the Sdok Kok Thom Inscription and the Enigma of the Khmer Empire, John Burgess discusses his most recent findings of the Khmer Empire. He estimates that the empire began around 802 AD and continued for six centuries, ending around 1431 AD. The empire was spread throughout Laos and Vietnam. The empire was strongly influenced by Indian Hinduism.
In many of the major cities of the empire, they built great temples. Burgess describes their efforts as, “trying to build cities in stone so wonderful that the gods would come down from heaven and live in them.” This passion in their religion carried over to their daily lives.
As described by Barbara Landry, a second-year seminary student at the Tree of Life Temple, “Daily life and practices were about communing with the Divine, the Divine wasn’t something separate but instead was infused in daily life.”
Traditional Khmer dance was a common way to commune with the Divine. This passion has lived on through Cambodian culture even through the occupation of the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge set out to erase this history. During their occupation all dance schools were closed and dancing became illegal.
By 1979, when the first school of dance reopened in Cambodia, Shapiro was eager to enroll. During this time in Cambodian dance there was an underlying urgency to perform internationally. It took the dancers less than two years to begin touring internationally, which was a defining moment in Cambodian dance history. From there Shapiro has had an extremely successful career, leading up to her most recent piece, “The Lives of Giants.”
As the main lights cued that the performance was beginning the band took the stage. Five men dressed in traditional Cambodian attire entered towards the back of the stage bowed to the audience and sat down. The lights began to dim as the beautiful melody and reverberating percussion lightly began to fill the room.
At the back of the stage there was a blue glow directly behind five tall lily pads. The giant Akaeng Khameaso was laying on the ground near center stage and became visible as the main lights came on. From the right side of the stage entered Uma, who slowly made her way over to the giant where they greet in a warm graceful manner.
This opening scene foreshadows the inevitable end of the giant that is to come. After Uma exits, two groups of four beautiful woman, each dressed in identical attire, take the stage and begin to taunt the giant. For his whole life, these women, who represent angels, taunt the giant and make his everyday existence a challenge. The giant must find a way to free himself form this torture so he calls on Preah Eyso, the form that Shiva is currently taking, and pleads for some type of relief. Shiva grants the giant a powerful magic finger. At first, he is afraid of his new power, but soon he is bothered by the angels once more.
Unable to resist the urge to use his new power, he breaks the angels up into many pieces. The giant realizes his potential and becomes drunk with power, taking several minutes to celebrate, and then he takes the throne in the middle of the stage representing his desire to take the throne of Shiva. There is great pressure from the fallen angels for Shiva to destroy the giant, but he fears for his own power and decides to flee in the opposite direction. Uma looks to Vishnu for assistance, but his only answer is to destroy the giant.
Tension begins to build as Uma pleads for the giant’s life, but Vishnu knows that the giant cannot be allowed to survive with such power. He allows Uma to attempt to change the giant one last time and promises that if she fails he will destroy the giant. What ensues is a final epic scene in which Uma seems to turn the giant back towards the light of morality, but Vishnu is not convinced and takes the giants finger and points it inward. During the last moments of the performance, the giant promises that he will return in the next life even more powerful, and as he dies, Uma laments the dominance of violence over compassion.
One cannot help but consider the proverb “Does Art imitate life, or does life imitate art?” when observing the expression of archetypal ideas and struggles as portrayed in this powerful dance. The universal concepts of morality and power continue to be acted out on the human stage, and this beautiful form of expression through dance not only serves to entertain, but also to inspire us to explore the impact of these ideas in our own life and world today.
The talent and grace of the Khmer Institute is undeniable and even someone with an untrained eye, such as myself, could tell that I was viewing years of practice and tradition. I cannot critique the performance further than to say it was a beautiful visual and auditory experience that left me with a sinking feeling of regret for the characters and a deep curiosity of Cambodian culture.
What struck me about this performance were two facts that seemed contradictory: the first was that this was a Cambodian dance ensemble, and the second was that they were performing a Hindu story. The little I remembered learning about Cambodia involved the Khmer Rouge, a terrible era in Cambodian history from 1975-1979 in which an estimated 1.7 to 2 million people were put to death in the “killing fields.”
The Khmer Rouge believed that they were going back to the glory of the Khmer empire, and in many ways tainted the word “Khmer” for any that are only familiar with modern Cambodian history. My first goal was to set out and discover the connection between Hinduism and Ancient Cambodia.
In his recent book Stories in Stone: the Sdok Kok Thom Inscription and the Enigma of the Khmer Empire, John Burgess discusses his most recent findings of the Khmer Empire. He estimates that the empire began around 802 AD and continued for six centuries, ending around 1431 AD. The empire was spread throughout Laos and Vietnam. The empire was strongly influenced by Indian Hinduism.
In many of the major cities of the empire, they built great temples. Burgess describes their efforts as, “trying to build cities in stone so wonderful that the gods would come down from heaven and live in them.” This passion in their religion carried over to their daily lives.
As described by Barbara Landry, a second-year seminary student at the Tree of Life Temple, “Daily life and practices were about communing with the Divine, the Divine wasn’t something separate but instead was infused in daily life.”
Traditional Khmer dance was a common way to commune with the Divine. This passion has lived on through Cambodian culture even through the occupation of the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge set out to erase this history. During their occupation all dance schools were closed and dancing became illegal.
By 1979, when the first school of dance reopened in Cambodia, Shapiro was eager to enroll. During this time in Cambodian dance there was an underlying urgency to perform internationally. It took the dancers less than two years to begin touring internationally, which was a defining moment in Cambodian dance history. From there Shapiro has had an extremely successful career, leading up to her most recent piece, “The Lives of Giants.”
As the main lights cued that the performance was beginning the band took the stage. Five men dressed in traditional Cambodian attire entered towards the back of the stage bowed to the audience and sat down. The lights began to dim as the beautiful melody and reverberating percussion lightly began to fill the room.
At the back of the stage there was a blue glow directly behind five tall lily pads. The giant Akaeng Khameaso was laying on the ground near center stage and became visible as the main lights came on. From the right side of the stage entered Uma, who slowly made her way over to the giant where they greet in a warm graceful manner.
This opening scene foreshadows the inevitable end of the giant that is to come. After Uma exits, two groups of four beautiful woman, each dressed in identical attire, take the stage and begin to taunt the giant. For his whole life, these women, who represent angels, taunt the giant and make his everyday existence a challenge. The giant must find a way to free himself form this torture so he calls on Preah Eyso, the form that Shiva is currently taking, and pleads for some type of relief. Shiva grants the giant a powerful magic finger. At first, he is afraid of his new power, but soon he is bothered by the angels once more.
Unable to resist the urge to use his new power, he breaks the angels up into many pieces. The giant realizes his potential and becomes drunk with power, taking several minutes to celebrate, and then he takes the throne in the middle of the stage representing his desire to take the throne of Shiva. There is great pressure from the fallen angels for Shiva to destroy the giant, but he fears for his own power and decides to flee in the opposite direction. Uma looks to Vishnu for assistance, but his only answer is to destroy the giant.
Tension begins to build as Uma pleads for the giant’s life, but Vishnu knows that the giant cannot be allowed to survive with such power. He allows Uma to attempt to change the giant one last time and promises that if she fails he will destroy the giant. What ensues is a final epic scene in which Uma seems to turn the giant back towards the light of morality, but Vishnu is not convinced and takes the giants finger and points it inward. During the last moments of the performance, the giant promises that he will return in the next life even more powerful, and as he dies, Uma laments the dominance of violence over compassion.
One cannot help but consider the proverb “Does Art imitate life, or does life imitate art?” when observing the expression of archetypal ideas and struggles as portrayed in this powerful dance. The universal concepts of morality and power continue to be acted out on the human stage, and this beautiful form of expression through dance not only serves to entertain, but also to inspire us to explore the impact of these ideas in our own life and world today.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Sunday Performance by Chamroeun Yin to Open Monthlong Series on Cambodian Classical Arts
All events in the Cambodian Arts Series are free to Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore students, faculty and staff. The Oct.22 performance by the Khmer Arts Ensemble is part of the College’s Performing Arts Series; tickets for the general public are available online at Brown Paper Tickets. All other events are free to the general public, although reservations are required for some events. For more information, see the Performing Arts Series website.
September 22, 2010Bryn Mawr University (Pennsylvania, USA)
Beginning this Sunday, Sept. 26, Bryn Mawr College will host a series of events focusing on the classical arts of Cambodia. Inspired by a visit from Cambodia’s Khmer Arts Ensemble scheduled for October, the series will include performances, lectures, and workshops conducted by members of the local Cambodian community of Philadelphia as well as the visitors from Cambodia.
The series opens Sunday at 7 p.m. in Goodhart Hall’s Katharine Hepburn Teaching Theater with “A Thousand Years in the Making: Cambodian Royal Court Traditional Dances,” a performance by Philadelphia-based Chamroeun Yin. Yin is a multitalented artist whose work in the visual arts includes preparing traditional costumes and masks for the dances he performs.
On Tuesday, Sept. 28, at 6:30 p.m. in Goodhart Music Hall, Yin will display and discuss some of the splendid and elegant costumes and masks he has created for Cambodian dance performances.
Other Events in the Series:
The series opens Sunday at 7 p.m. in Goodhart Hall’s Katharine Hepburn Teaching Theater with “A Thousand Years in the Making: Cambodian Royal Court Traditional Dances,” a performance by Philadelphia-based Chamroeun Yin. Yin is a multitalented artist whose work in the visual arts includes preparing traditional costumes and masks for the dances he performs.
On Tuesday, Sept. 28, at 6:30 p.m. in Goodhart Music Hall, Yin will display and discuss some of the splendid and elegant costumes and masks he has created for Cambodian dance performances.
Other Events in the Series:
- Monday, Oct. 4, 4:15 p.m. , Carpenter B21. Screening of Dancing through Death: The Monkey, Magic, and Madness of Cambodia, a documentary focusing on Thavro Phim, a classical Cambodian dancer who survived the genocide of the Pol Pot Regime. Phim, who will be on hand to discuss the film, continues to use dance with both youth and immigrant communities as a way of recovering and maintaining cultural identity. Co-sponsored by the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict.
- Monday, Oct. 18, 7 p.m., Pembroke Dance Studio. “The Cambodian Monkey Dance: Trickster, Warrior, and King,” a workshop with Thavro Pim. Open to dancers, as well as to those with experience in other movement forms ranging from tai chi and capoeira to theatrical improvisation. Pim is one of only three trained dancers in the US who performs and teaches this important dance. Call the Office for the Arts (610-526-5210) to reserve a space.
- Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, Oct. 20-23, various locations. Master Classes in Classical Cambodian Technique with members of the Khmer Arts Ensemble. See the Dance Program Events website for information about times, places, and how to reserve a space.
- Friday, Oct. 22, 8 p.m., McPherson Auditorium, Goodhart Hall. The Lives of Giants, a performance by the 30 dancers and musicians of Cambodia’s Khmer Arts Ensemble. Drawing on the Cambodian Reamker (Ramayana), The Lives of Giants fuses classical and experimental dance techniques into a spare, complex, powerfully spiritual evening that delivers a resonant message about the effects of violence. Ticket information at the Performing Arts Series website.
- Saturday, Oct. 23, 7 p.m., McPherson Auditorium, Goodhart Hall. Learning to Listen: explore the beauty and intricacies of Cambodian classical music as members of the Khmer Arts Ensemble both play and discuss both the instruments and the music. Call the Office for the Arts (610-526-5210) to make a reservation.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Dancing Away From Tragedy
Khmer Arts Ensemble dancers Mot Pharan (left) and Sao Phirom in Sophiline Cheam Shapiro's Shir Ha-Shirim. (Photo by Sophiline Cheam Shapiro)Sophiline Cheam Shapiro '97 was among the first students to re-learn the classical dances of war-ravaged Cambodia. Now, she teaches the almost-lost art form and produces original choreography, which has been staged around the world.
By Angilee Shah
Contributing Writer
UCLA Magazine
After the terrible violence of Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, the joy of dance returned to war-ravaged Cambodia. Sophiline Cheam Shapiro '97 was among the first students to re-learn the country's classical dances. Now, this National Heritage Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts is teaching the almost-lost art form in the Long Beach studio of her Khmer Arts Academy.
Cheam Shapiro's students are often the children of refugees; she hopes her students find inspiration in the arts the same way she did as a young girl who survived a terrible tragedy. "You can either run [from the past] or come back and help," she says. "I chose dance."
Cheam Shapiro is from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and at 8 years old, in 1975, she was forced to leave the city and work in the fields. It was the time of the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields of Cambodia. In four years, more than 1 million people — as many as 2.2 million by some estimates — were killed by the genocidal Communist regime. Among them were Cheam Shapiro's father and two brothers.
The Khmer Rouge saw Cambodian classical dance as a symbol of royal power, a backwards spectacle that went against the principles of a cultural revolution. But Cheam Shapiro saw it as resurrection of Cambodian cultural pride. When she returned to Phnom Penh with her mother in 1979, their house had been burnt to the ground. But her uncle, a well-known artist, had survived and begun the work of reviving classical art by creating an artists colony. He told Cheam Shapiro, then a teenager, that she could have a long career if she studied theater arts.
But she loved the slow and intricate movements, the representations of nature and life that infuse Cambodian dance. In 1988, she graduated from the University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh (now the Royal University), part of the first class to master the now-rare art form after the Khmer Rouge was removed from power. She joined the university's faculty and performed her unique pieces around the world, including uniquely Cambodian adaptations of such English-language classics as Othello, and choreography that both built upon and challenged traditional forms.
In 1991, Cheam Shapiro moved to California with her husband. But she felt that she had lost her "sense of Cambodian-ness" and started practicing dance at home. She made her own practice costumes, and when she put them on she felt like she was maintaining her identity.
At UCLA, she graduated with a degree in dance ethnology. Since then, her choreography has been seen around the world. In 2002, she opened the Khmer Arts Academy with her husband, and more recently created the Khmer Arts Ensemble in Takhmao, outside of Phnom Penh. The 29-member troupe of dancers and musicians has performed Cheam Shapiro's original choreography in festivals and shows around the world.
"I came from Cambodia and I had nothing with me but dance," Cheam Shapiro explains. Thanks to her, people around the world have it, too.
By Angilee Shah
Contributing Writer
UCLA Magazine
After the terrible violence of Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, the joy of dance returned to war-ravaged Cambodia. Sophiline Cheam Shapiro '97 was among the first students to re-learn the country's classical dances. Now, this National Heritage Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts is teaching the almost-lost art form in the Long Beach studio of her Khmer Arts Academy.
Cheam Shapiro's students are often the children of refugees; she hopes her students find inspiration in the arts the same way she did as a young girl who survived a terrible tragedy. "You can either run [from the past] or come back and help," she says. "I chose dance."
Cheam Shapiro is from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and at 8 years old, in 1975, she was forced to leave the city and work in the fields. It was the time of the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields of Cambodia. In four years, more than 1 million people — as many as 2.2 million by some estimates — were killed by the genocidal Communist regime. Among them were Cheam Shapiro's father and two brothers.
The Khmer Rouge saw Cambodian classical dance as a symbol of royal power, a backwards spectacle that went against the principles of a cultural revolution. But Cheam Shapiro saw it as resurrection of Cambodian cultural pride. When she returned to Phnom Penh with her mother in 1979, their house had been burnt to the ground. But her uncle, a well-known artist, had survived and begun the work of reviving classical art by creating an artists colony. He told Cheam Shapiro, then a teenager, that she could have a long career if she studied theater arts.
But she loved the slow and intricate movements, the representations of nature and life that infuse Cambodian dance. In 1988, she graduated from the University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh (now the Royal University), part of the first class to master the now-rare art form after the Khmer Rouge was removed from power. She joined the university's faculty and performed her unique pieces around the world, including uniquely Cambodian adaptations of such English-language classics as Othello, and choreography that both built upon and challenged traditional forms.
In 1991, Cheam Shapiro moved to California with her husband. But she felt that she had lost her "sense of Cambodian-ness" and started practicing dance at home. She made her own practice costumes, and when she put them on she felt like she was maintaining her identity.
At UCLA, she graduated with a degree in dance ethnology. Since then, her choreography has been seen around the world. In 2002, she opened the Khmer Arts Academy with her husband, and more recently created the Khmer Arts Ensemble in Takhmao, outside of Phnom Penh. The 29-member troupe of dancers and musicians has performed Cheam Shapiro's original choreography in festivals and shows around the world.
"I came from Cambodia and I had nothing with me but dance," Cheam Shapiro explains. Thanks to her, people around the world have it, too.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Reviving Khmer classical dance
The Dance of Loyalty to the King, May 1923. Bettmann Archive.
CAMBODIAN DANCE: Celebration of the Gods Denise Heywood River Books Bangkok, 144 pp, $45 ISBN 987-9749863404
Pamina Devi choreographed by Sophiline Cheam Shapiro.How Cambodian culture re-emerged after the devastating Pol Pot years
24/08/2009
Writer: TOM FAWTHROP
Bangkok Post
The awesome grace and meticulous movements of the performers have entranced audiences since ancient times, an experience now shared with plane-loads of tourists descending on Siem Reap in western Cambodia, the jumping off point for the world's largest temple complex - legendary Angkor Wat.
Dating back to the days of the great Angkor empire that flourished from the 9th to 15th centuries, Cambodian dance is a celebration of the gods, mythology and the world of the royal palace.
This 144-page lavishly illustrated coffee-table book authored by Denise Heywood, a lecturer on Asian art, brings the reader a fine appreciation of Cambodian dance intertwined with the turbulent history and how it has always been at the core of Khmer culture and identity. The book details and explains the origins and development of the dances, music and shadow puppetry, all in the context of their spiritual importance as a medium for communicating with the gods.
But Cambodia's recent tragedy brought its great tradition of dance near oblivion. The "Killing Fields" regime of the Khmer Rouge not only killed through slave labour, starvation and slaughter nearly 2 million people, including 90 per cent of artists, dancers and writers, but it also came close to extinguishing Khmer culture and tradition. Pol Pot's brand new agrarian dystopia had no place for the arts, culture or any other kind of entertainment except xenophobic songs and Pol Pot propaganda.
Heywood first arrived in Cambodia as a freelance writer in 1994, and her interest in dance was heightened by the extraordinary tale of how a few dancers and choreographers survived the genocidal years from 1975 to 79.
In January 1979 a new Heng Samrin government backed by Vietnam proclaimed the restoration of normal society after four years of the Pol Pot regime had trashed most aspects of family life and the previous society.
A handful of survivors emerged from the darkest era in Cambodian history dedicated to resuscitating their cherished traditions of dance. Actor, poet and director Pich Tum Kravel and former director of the National Conservatory Chheng Phon were among the cultural stars who miraculously survived.
They became the key people enlisted by the new Ministry of Information and Culture under Keo Chenda, charged with the critical mission of bringing all the surviving dancers together.
The expertise was handed down through the generations from master to pupil and never documented in written form, so everything depended on human memory. The late Chea Samy became the leading teacher at the re-established School of Fine Arts in 1981 (ironically Pol Pot was her brother-in-law).
Piecing together the collective memories of survivors and much of the vast repertory, the performing arts were revived.
When this reviewer saw the post-Pol Pot Cambodian National Dance Company perform in Phnom Penh in 1981, it was a highly emotional experience. Members of the audience wept. This outpouring of raw emotion encompassed both tears of sadness for those loved ones they would never see again - and tears of joy that Khmer dance was alive again and had risen from the ashes of nihilistic destruction.
Nothing had greater significance for the Khmer people in this process of rebuilding than this revival of the nation's soul and psyche in which dance plays a central role.
While Heywood is to be commended for her documentation of the revival of dance in the 1980s, it is a pity she has wrongly contextualised this cultural renaissance by claiming that "Heng Samrin's Vietnamese government" organised a national arts festival in 1980.
In fact President Heng Samrin and everyone else in the new government were all Cambodians and not Vietnamese. Somehow the author has been infected with the cold war propaganda emanating from Asean governments and US embassies in the region that stressed Phnom Penh was being run by a "Vietnamese puppet-regime" and the Cambodians blindly followed Hanoi's orders.
The reality was more complicated. The cultural revival depicted in this book makes it clear that Vietnamese control over security and foreign policy, despite tensions and differences with their Cambodian allies, did not block the re-emergence of Khmer culture that at the same time planted the seeds for future independence.
In 2003 Unesco bestowed formal recognition proclaiming the Royal Ballet of Cambodia to be a masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage. And one year later Prince Norodom Sihamoni, a former ballet choreographer and dancer, was crowned king.
Thai classical dance borrows much from the dance traditions of Angkorian times. After Siam's invasion of Siem Reap in 1431, hundreds of Cambodian dancers were abducted and brought to dance in Ayutthaya, at that time the capital hosting the royal court of the Thai king.
This timely book also mentions that Cambodian choreographer Sophiline Shapiro has, among many other projects, adapted Mozart's Magic Flute to Khmer classical dance as part of a 2006 festival to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the great composer's birth.
This production with many innovations caused a stir among the purists. Shapiro passionately defends her new productions against the critics, telling the author "increasing the repertory of dance will help to preserve it and prevent it from atrophying or becoming a museum piece."
Dating back to the days of the great Angkor empire that flourished from the 9th to 15th centuries, Cambodian dance is a celebration of the gods, mythology and the world of the royal palace.
This 144-page lavishly illustrated coffee-table book authored by Denise Heywood, a lecturer on Asian art, brings the reader a fine appreciation of Cambodian dance intertwined with the turbulent history and how it has always been at the core of Khmer culture and identity. The book details and explains the origins and development of the dances, music and shadow puppetry, all in the context of their spiritual importance as a medium for communicating with the gods.
But Cambodia's recent tragedy brought its great tradition of dance near oblivion. The "Killing Fields" regime of the Khmer Rouge not only killed through slave labour, starvation and slaughter nearly 2 million people, including 90 per cent of artists, dancers and writers, but it also came close to extinguishing Khmer culture and tradition. Pol Pot's brand new agrarian dystopia had no place for the arts, culture or any other kind of entertainment except xenophobic songs and Pol Pot propaganda.
Heywood first arrived in Cambodia as a freelance writer in 1994, and her interest in dance was heightened by the extraordinary tale of how a few dancers and choreographers survived the genocidal years from 1975 to 79.
In January 1979 a new Heng Samrin government backed by Vietnam proclaimed the restoration of normal society after four years of the Pol Pot regime had trashed most aspects of family life and the previous society.
A handful of survivors emerged from the darkest era in Cambodian history dedicated to resuscitating their cherished traditions of dance. Actor, poet and director Pich Tum Kravel and former director of the National Conservatory Chheng Phon were among the cultural stars who miraculously survived.
They became the key people enlisted by the new Ministry of Information and Culture under Keo Chenda, charged with the critical mission of bringing all the surviving dancers together.
The expertise was handed down through the generations from master to pupil and never documented in written form, so everything depended on human memory. The late Chea Samy became the leading teacher at the re-established School of Fine Arts in 1981 (ironically Pol Pot was her brother-in-law).
Piecing together the collective memories of survivors and much of the vast repertory, the performing arts were revived.
When this reviewer saw the post-Pol Pot Cambodian National Dance Company perform in Phnom Penh in 1981, it was a highly emotional experience. Members of the audience wept. This outpouring of raw emotion encompassed both tears of sadness for those loved ones they would never see again - and tears of joy that Khmer dance was alive again and had risen from the ashes of nihilistic destruction.
Nothing had greater significance for the Khmer people in this process of rebuilding than this revival of the nation's soul and psyche in which dance plays a central role.
While Heywood is to be commended for her documentation of the revival of dance in the 1980s, it is a pity she has wrongly contextualised this cultural renaissance by claiming that "Heng Samrin's Vietnamese government" organised a national arts festival in 1980.
In fact President Heng Samrin and everyone else in the new government were all Cambodians and not Vietnamese. Somehow the author has been infected with the cold war propaganda emanating from Asean governments and US embassies in the region that stressed Phnom Penh was being run by a "Vietnamese puppet-regime" and the Cambodians blindly followed Hanoi's orders.
The reality was more complicated. The cultural revival depicted in this book makes it clear that Vietnamese control over security and foreign policy, despite tensions and differences with their Cambodian allies, did not block the re-emergence of Khmer culture that at the same time planted the seeds for future independence.
In 2003 Unesco bestowed formal recognition proclaiming the Royal Ballet of Cambodia to be a masterpiece of oral and intangible heritage. And one year later Prince Norodom Sihamoni, a former ballet choreographer and dancer, was crowned king.
Thai classical dance borrows much from the dance traditions of Angkorian times. After Siam's invasion of Siem Reap in 1431, hundreds of Cambodian dancers were abducted and brought to dance in Ayutthaya, at that time the capital hosting the royal court of the Thai king.
This timely book also mentions that Cambodian choreographer Sophiline Shapiro has, among many other projects, adapted Mozart's Magic Flute to Khmer classical dance as part of a 2006 festival to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the great composer's birth.
This production with many innovations caused a stir among the purists. Shapiro passionately defends her new productions against the critics, telling the author "increasing the repertory of dance will help to preserve it and prevent it from atrophying or becoming a museum piece."
Thursday, January 29, 2009
From the bloodied ruins of Angor Wat emerge steps of grace
Transmission of the Invisible at the PuSH Festival. Photograph by: Handout, PuSHJanuary 28, 2009
By Kevin Griffin
The Vancouver Sun (British Columbia, Canada)
VANCOUVER - Five years ago, Peter Chin saw something at Angkor Wat he couldn't forget.
At the time, he was in Cambodia on a five-month residency studying classical Khmer dance and music. This style of movement and sound dating back more than 1,000 years that nearly disappeared during the Khmer Rouge genocide in the 1970s.
One day, Chin saw history in the making. He watched as an aged Cambodian dance teacher instructed her student in a classical work that had nearly been lost. Chin looked on and realized that something unique was going on between student and teacher.
Somehow, they had transformed themselves so they could transmit the invisible elements that made Khmer dance essentially Khmer.
"This altered state of transmission must have come to the fore stronger than usual . . . given that there was something of ultimate value at stake," Chin said.
"This heightened state of soul- and spirit-sharing that brings us together, as parts of something larger than ourselves, transcending cultural differences and clashes and bridging ruptures in our history is what I hope Transmission of the Invisible can embrace."
Chin's Transmission of the Invisible is being performed three times during the PuSh Performing Arts Festival starting this evening at 8 p.m. at the Scotiabank Dance Centre.
As artistic director of his company, Tribal Cracking Wind, Chin spent three years creating the 70-minute work. It was developed in association with Yim Savann and Phon Sopheap, two Cambodian classical dancers from Phnom Penh's Amrita Performing Arts.
As well, the work was created with various community partners in Cambodia who were incorporated in the projected video. They included a child psychologist and social worker who helps traumatized children, a community of Buddhist monks, a young man and his younger brother taking care of their dying grandmother and dance teachers instructing younger students.
Given Cambodia's recent fractured history, one of the dominant themes in Transmission of the Invisible is fragmentation - portrayed in abrupt changes in choreography and movement and heard in sudden shifts in the score. It also works its way into the costumes.
"Two gowns are made out of silk organza," he said in a phone interview. "They're distressed or tattered - like the history which has been interrupted and fragmented."
Dance in Cambodia is linked directly to its history.
Built in the 12th century, Angkor Wat was was the centre of the Khmer empire that was the dominant power in the region for about 500 years starting in the 9th century.
Shortly after it was built, Angkor Wat was sacked by the Siamese - the Thais. The Siamese took Khmer dancers to the ancient capital Ayuthaya where it subsequently influenced the development of Thai dancing.
Khmer classical dance has been compared to ballet because of the years of training required. Cambodian dancers are famous for being able to bend their hands back so far they can almost touch their wrists.
UNESCO considers Cambodian classical dance as part of the world's intangible cultural heritage.
Over the years, Khmer classical dancing became associated with the Cambodian royal court. When the Maoist Khmer Rouge took control of the country in 1975, classical dancing and dancers were seen as symbols of the country's feudal past. An estimated 90 per cent of the dancers and teachers were killed by the Khmer Rouge.
Transmission of the Invisible, however, isn't about the trauma caused by the genocide. It's about what comes after.
"It's about rebuilding - not so much about the trauma but where we go after the trauma," he said.
"I want to focus on the wordless and ineffable, on the kind of energetic emanation that we can't see, but that we communicate to each other at that hard-to-define level."
In addition to the choreography, Chin has designed the costumes and created the music with Garnet Willis. The soundscape includes natural and street sounds recorded in Cambodia.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Chin is based in Toronto where he's known not only as a dancer/choreographer, but also as a musician/composer, performance artist and designer.
He is a three-time recipient of the Dora Mavor Moore Awards for outstanding new choreography.
Chin performed in Vancouver two years ago at the Dancing on the Edge Festival. He danced in BODYGlass, a work he co-created with Alvin Erasga Tolentino.
Transmission of the Invisible will be going to Singapore later this year and, if funding can be arranged, to Cambodia.
Transmission of the Invisible is at the Scotiabank Dance Centre tonight to Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets at www.ticketstonight.ca or 604-684-2787.
kevingriffin@vancouversun.com
At the time, he was in Cambodia on a five-month residency studying classical Khmer dance and music. This style of movement and sound dating back more than 1,000 years that nearly disappeared during the Khmer Rouge genocide in the 1970s.
One day, Chin saw history in the making. He watched as an aged Cambodian dance teacher instructed her student in a classical work that had nearly been lost. Chin looked on and realized that something unique was going on between student and teacher.
Somehow, they had transformed themselves so they could transmit the invisible elements that made Khmer dance essentially Khmer.
"This altered state of transmission must have come to the fore stronger than usual . . . given that there was something of ultimate value at stake," Chin said.
"This heightened state of soul- and spirit-sharing that brings us together, as parts of something larger than ourselves, transcending cultural differences and clashes and bridging ruptures in our history is what I hope Transmission of the Invisible can embrace."
Chin's Transmission of the Invisible is being performed three times during the PuSh Performing Arts Festival starting this evening at 8 p.m. at the Scotiabank Dance Centre.
As artistic director of his company, Tribal Cracking Wind, Chin spent three years creating the 70-minute work. It was developed in association with Yim Savann and Phon Sopheap, two Cambodian classical dancers from Phnom Penh's Amrita Performing Arts.
As well, the work was created with various community partners in Cambodia who were incorporated in the projected video. They included a child psychologist and social worker who helps traumatized children, a community of Buddhist monks, a young man and his younger brother taking care of their dying grandmother and dance teachers instructing younger students.
Given Cambodia's recent fractured history, one of the dominant themes in Transmission of the Invisible is fragmentation - portrayed in abrupt changes in choreography and movement and heard in sudden shifts in the score. It also works its way into the costumes.
"Two gowns are made out of silk organza," he said in a phone interview. "They're distressed or tattered - like the history which has been interrupted and fragmented."
Dance in Cambodia is linked directly to its history.
Built in the 12th century, Angkor Wat was was the centre of the Khmer empire that was the dominant power in the region for about 500 years starting in the 9th century.
Shortly after it was built, Angkor Wat was sacked by the Siamese - the Thais. The Siamese took Khmer dancers to the ancient capital Ayuthaya where it subsequently influenced the development of Thai dancing.
Khmer classical dance has been compared to ballet because of the years of training required. Cambodian dancers are famous for being able to bend their hands back so far they can almost touch their wrists.
UNESCO considers Cambodian classical dance as part of the world's intangible cultural heritage.
Over the years, Khmer classical dancing became associated with the Cambodian royal court. When the Maoist Khmer Rouge took control of the country in 1975, classical dancing and dancers were seen as symbols of the country's feudal past. An estimated 90 per cent of the dancers and teachers were killed by the Khmer Rouge.
Transmission of the Invisible, however, isn't about the trauma caused by the genocide. It's about what comes after.
"It's about rebuilding - not so much about the trauma but where we go after the trauma," he said.
"I want to focus on the wordless and ineffable, on the kind of energetic emanation that we can't see, but that we communicate to each other at that hard-to-define level."
In addition to the choreography, Chin has designed the costumes and created the music with Garnet Willis. The soundscape includes natural and street sounds recorded in Cambodia.
Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Chin is based in Toronto where he's known not only as a dancer/choreographer, but also as a musician/composer, performance artist and designer.
He is a three-time recipient of the Dora Mavor Moore Awards for outstanding new choreography.
Chin performed in Vancouver two years ago at the Dancing on the Edge Festival. He danced in BODYGlass, a work he co-created with Alvin Erasga Tolentino.
Transmission of the Invisible will be going to Singapore later this year and, if funding can be arranged, to Cambodia.
Transmission of the Invisible is at the Scotiabank Dance Centre tonight to Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets at www.ticketstonight.ca or 604-684-2787.
kevingriffin@vancouversun.com
Thursday, November 27, 2008
An Unlikely Pairing on Common Ground
John Zorn and Sophiline Cheam Shapiro: Mot Pharan, left, and Chao Socheata performing Ms. Cheam Shapiro’s choreography at the Guggenheim Museum. (Photo: David Goldman for The New York Times)Music Review | Sophiline Cheam Shapiro and John Zorn
November 27, 2008
By STEVE SMITH
New York Times
To call the collaboration presented at the Guggenheim Museum on Monday night unlikely is to understate the case by an order of magnitude. There was John Zorn, a chameleonic New York composer whose work has fruitfully touched on everything from chamber music to death metal. And there was Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, an innovative choreographer who has pushed at the boundaries of classical Cambodian dance with her Khmer Arts Academy in California.
That these two creative forces were meant to find common ground in the Song of Songs, the Old Testament book whose heady, amorous poetry is viewed by some as an allegory for the relationship between God and Israel, made it that much harder to imagine this intersection.
Mr. Zorn has devoted much of his work, especially during the last decade, to exploring themes of Jewish identity. His “Shir Ha-Shirim,” for an amplified quintet of female singers with female and male narrators, was first performed in February, with Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson reading the texts in English. Here, Ayelet Rose Gottlieb and Jeremy Fogel recited in Hebrew.
During an onstage interview Ms. Cheam Shapiro said she had referred to a Khmer translation of the Song of Songs in conceiving her choreography. Some of her gestures represented words or passages, she said. For others she went with the flow of the music.
You could sense what she meant when paired dancers from the Khmer Arts Ensemble moved together in graceful harmony. Their comforting closeness overcame the courtly severity of their gestures, connecting with Mr. Zorn’s sensual music and the passionate narration. Mostly, though, anyone unversed in Hebrew and the vocabulary of Cambodian dance was at a disadvantage in discerning deeper meanings.
What remained was a gorgeous spectacle of contradictory sensations. Hearing the urgent narration (and watching Mr. Fogel’s emphatic gyrations as he spoke), you wanted to follow his words; meanwhile your focus was dragged away from equally meaningful contributions by the singers and dancers.
And Mr. Zorn’s vocal score warranted attention. Using devices from medieval polyphony and works by Berio, Ligeti, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, Mr. Zorn created a complex vocal web that shifted in style from one section to the next, with repeating thematic strands and patterns lending continuity. The Daughters of Jerusalem — Lisa Bielawa, Martha Cluver, Abby Fischer, Kate Mulvihill and Kirsten Sollek — sang with clarity and refinement.
The program opened with selections from Mr. Zorn’s “Sefer Shirim shel Shir Ha-Shirim,” a new collection of short pieces. Melodies styled after Jewish folk music uncurled over seductive lounge-music textures and ostinato rhythms. Openly courting nostalgic exotica, the music had an irresistible charm, particularly when Carol Emanuel’s charismatic harp playing intersected with Kenny Wollesen’s undulating vibraphone chords.
That these two creative forces were meant to find common ground in the Song of Songs, the Old Testament book whose heady, amorous poetry is viewed by some as an allegory for the relationship between God and Israel, made it that much harder to imagine this intersection.
Mr. Zorn has devoted much of his work, especially during the last decade, to exploring themes of Jewish identity. His “Shir Ha-Shirim,” for an amplified quintet of female singers with female and male narrators, was first performed in February, with Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson reading the texts in English. Here, Ayelet Rose Gottlieb and Jeremy Fogel recited in Hebrew.
During an onstage interview Ms. Cheam Shapiro said she had referred to a Khmer translation of the Song of Songs in conceiving her choreography. Some of her gestures represented words or passages, she said. For others she went with the flow of the music.
You could sense what she meant when paired dancers from the Khmer Arts Ensemble moved together in graceful harmony. Their comforting closeness overcame the courtly severity of their gestures, connecting with Mr. Zorn’s sensual music and the passionate narration. Mostly, though, anyone unversed in Hebrew and the vocabulary of Cambodian dance was at a disadvantage in discerning deeper meanings.
What remained was a gorgeous spectacle of contradictory sensations. Hearing the urgent narration (and watching Mr. Fogel’s emphatic gyrations as he spoke), you wanted to follow his words; meanwhile your focus was dragged away from equally meaningful contributions by the singers and dancers.
And Mr. Zorn’s vocal score warranted attention. Using devices from medieval polyphony and works by Berio, Ligeti, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, Mr. Zorn created a complex vocal web that shifted in style from one section to the next, with repeating thematic strands and patterns lending continuity. The Daughters of Jerusalem — Lisa Bielawa, Martha Cluver, Abby Fischer, Kate Mulvihill and Kirsten Sollek — sang with clarity and refinement.
The program opened with selections from Mr. Zorn’s “Sefer Shirim shel Shir Ha-Shirim,” a new collection of short pieces. Melodies styled after Jewish folk music uncurled over seductive lounge-music textures and ostinato rhythms. Openly courting nostalgic exotica, the music had an irresistible charm, particularly when Carol Emanuel’s charismatic harp playing intersected with Kenny Wollesen’s undulating vibraphone chords.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Mozart Tale With Accent of Cambodia
Pumtheara Chend as Pamina Devi at the Joyce Theater. (Photo: Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times)Dance Review | Pamina Devi
October 11, 2007
By GIA KOURLAS
The New York Times (USA)
“Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute,” a new work by Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, unfolds like a silent film, taking such gradual, measured hold that by the time it’s over, you can’t help feeling as if you’ve crossed over to another world.
The story, a retelling of Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” is a celebration of youth, love and enlightenment that places its title character between her estranged parents. Unable to abide by either’s rigid ways, she discovers, more through honor than rebellion, that she possesses enough fortitude to carve her own path.
Performed by the 32 dancers, musicians and singers of the Khmer Arts Ensemble of Phnom Penh at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday night, the 90-minute production was commissioned in 2006 by Peter Sellars for a festival in Vienna. Tender and faintly campy in the sweetest sense — as when glimmers of irritation flicker across the performers’ faces — “Pamina Devi” is an exotic journey enriched by subtle political undertones.
All of the dancers are women, even those playing male roles; their jeweled costumes give splendor to their highly articulated feet and sinuous arms and hands, in which supple fingers curl backward to extraordinary effect. Even though Ms. Cheam Shapiro’s Cambodian tale, told with English subtitles, is occasionally dense — navigating the names practically requires sketching out a family tree — the staging and characterization isn’t nearly as opaque.
In the dance-drama, Pamina Devi, portrayed by the delicate Pumtheara Chend, is abducted by Thornea (Sok Sokhan) to the dismay of her mother, Sayon Reachny, the Queen of the Night (the wonderfully imperious Sam Sathya). After the queen and her devotees liberate Preah Chhapoan (Kong Bonich) from a krut, or garuda bird, he promises to rescue Pamina Devi. Armed with a portrait of her and a magic flute, he travels to the Realm of the Sun, ruled by the young girl’s pompous, controlling father, Preah Arun Tipadey (Chao Socheata).
Ms. Cheam Shapiro’s lyrics, translated from Khmer, can be unintentionally funny. (After Preah Chhapoan gazes longingly at Pamina Devi’s portrait, his subtitle reads, “Between the two of us, we would produce the most perfect children.”) Yet they don’t dim this production’s vibrancy. From the percussive, tangy music to the powerful bodies encased in gold, “Pamina Devi” is something of a quiet spectacle, and its message is freedom.
“Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute” continues through Sunday at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea; (212) 242-0800 or joyce.org.
The story, a retelling of Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” is a celebration of youth, love and enlightenment that places its title character between her estranged parents. Unable to abide by either’s rigid ways, she discovers, more through honor than rebellion, that she possesses enough fortitude to carve her own path.
Performed by the 32 dancers, musicians and singers of the Khmer Arts Ensemble of Phnom Penh at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday night, the 90-minute production was commissioned in 2006 by Peter Sellars for a festival in Vienna. Tender and faintly campy in the sweetest sense — as when glimmers of irritation flicker across the performers’ faces — “Pamina Devi” is an exotic journey enriched by subtle political undertones.
All of the dancers are women, even those playing male roles; their jeweled costumes give splendor to their highly articulated feet and sinuous arms and hands, in which supple fingers curl backward to extraordinary effect. Even though Ms. Cheam Shapiro’s Cambodian tale, told with English subtitles, is occasionally dense — navigating the names practically requires sketching out a family tree — the staging and characterization isn’t nearly as opaque.
In the dance-drama, Pamina Devi, portrayed by the delicate Pumtheara Chend, is abducted by Thornea (Sok Sokhan) to the dismay of her mother, Sayon Reachny, the Queen of the Night (the wonderfully imperious Sam Sathya). After the queen and her devotees liberate Preah Chhapoan (Kong Bonich) from a krut, or garuda bird, he promises to rescue Pamina Devi. Armed with a portrait of her and a magic flute, he travels to the Realm of the Sun, ruled by the young girl’s pompous, controlling father, Preah Arun Tipadey (Chao Socheata).
Ms. Cheam Shapiro’s lyrics, translated from Khmer, can be unintentionally funny. (After Preah Chhapoan gazes longingly at Pamina Devi’s portrait, his subtitle reads, “Between the two of us, we would produce the most perfect children.”) Yet they don’t dim this production’s vibrancy. From the percussive, tangy music to the powerful bodies encased in gold, “Pamina Devi” is something of a quiet spectacle, and its message is freedom.
“Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute” continues through Sunday at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea; (212) 242-0800 or joyce.org.
'Magic Flute,' Cambodian-Style, Dazzles in New York Dance Debut
Dancers take part in a performance of "Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute" by Sophiline Cheam Shapiro in this undated handout photo. Performances will take place through Oct. 14 at the Joyce Theater in New York. Photographer: John Shapiro/Khmer Arts Academy via Bloomberg News 
Dancers take part in a performance of "Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute" by Sophiline Cheam Shapiro in this undated handout photo. Performances will take place through Oct. 14 at the Joyce Theater in New York. Photographer: John Shapiro/Khmer Arts Academy via Bloomberg News By Robert Hilferty
Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Decked out in bejeweled costumes of golden silk with headdresses that look like miniature temples, the dancers retell the story of Mozart's ``The Magic Flute'' -- without the music and a few other surprises.
For starters, there are no guys in ``Pamina Devi'' now at the Joyce Theater in New York through the weekend. All parts are played by females who move with the hypnotizing deliberateness of a Southeast Asian dance tradition dating back 1,000 years.
The pungent oboes, xylophones and drums add a piquant flavor.
``Pamina Devi'' is the kind of Cambodian classical dance project that Fred Frumberg, executive director of the Amrita Performing Arts, has nurtured during the past decade.
Ballet dancers who had fled the Khmer Rouge during its years of murder and destruction introduced him to the art form when he was living in Paris.
An assistant to such directors as Peter Sellars and Francesca Zambello, Frumberg was working at the Bastille Opera in Paris at the time and looking for something new.
He joined Unesco as a volunteer and became part of a community of foreigners devoted to helping the Cambodians recover their heritage. Four years ago, he set up Amrita, which has a U.S. nonprofit status. His first grant, from the Rockefeller Foundation, allowed him to set up in Phnom Penh. New grants now allow the company to work with young artists.
``What impressed me was the sheer resilience of Cambodian classical dance, the fact that it was able to bounce back to life after near annihilation during the Khmer Rouge,'' Frumberg says.
Killing Fields
Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, the choreographer of ``Pamina Devi,'' barely survived the killing fields as a child. In her deepest misery, when she barely had enough to eat, she found inspiration and solace in the celestial dancers that appear on Cambodian temples. Now she shuttles between Los Angeles and Takhmao, Cambodia.
``Sophiline had created this amazing work called `Samritechak,' a Cambodian classical dance interpretation of `Othello,''' Frumberg says. ``My organization then helped premiere it in Cambodia.''
Frumberg introduced ``Samritechak'' to director Sellars, who brought it to the Venice Biennale in 2000 and then commissioned ``Pamina Devi'' for a Mozart festival in Vienna last year.
``I'm now developing a new piece based on people interviewed by the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which supplies lots of the information being used in the current Khmer Rouge trials,'' Frumberg says. ``We want to perform this in the provinces of Cambodia for Cambodians.''
He still loves taking friends to Angkor Wat, Cambodia's most famous temple. ``There's a certain bend in the road where you see the first tower of that temple,'' says Frumberg. ``Amazingly, after 30 visits, there is still that little extra beat my heart takes when I see that tower.''
``Pamina Devi'' runs through Oct. 14 at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., Manhattan. Information: +1-212-242-0800; http://www.joyce.org . To learn more about Amrita: http://www.amritaperformingarts.org .
(Robert Hilferty is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this story: Robert Hilferty in New York at
rhilferty@verizon.net
For starters, there are no guys in ``Pamina Devi'' now at the Joyce Theater in New York through the weekend. All parts are played by females who move with the hypnotizing deliberateness of a Southeast Asian dance tradition dating back 1,000 years.
The pungent oboes, xylophones and drums add a piquant flavor.
``Pamina Devi'' is the kind of Cambodian classical dance project that Fred Frumberg, executive director of the Amrita Performing Arts, has nurtured during the past decade.
Ballet dancers who had fled the Khmer Rouge during its years of murder and destruction introduced him to the art form when he was living in Paris.
An assistant to such directors as Peter Sellars and Francesca Zambello, Frumberg was working at the Bastille Opera in Paris at the time and looking for something new.
He joined Unesco as a volunteer and became part of a community of foreigners devoted to helping the Cambodians recover their heritage. Four years ago, he set up Amrita, which has a U.S. nonprofit status. His first grant, from the Rockefeller Foundation, allowed him to set up in Phnom Penh. New grants now allow the company to work with young artists.
``What impressed me was the sheer resilience of Cambodian classical dance, the fact that it was able to bounce back to life after near annihilation during the Khmer Rouge,'' Frumberg says.
Killing Fields
Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, the choreographer of ``Pamina Devi,'' barely survived the killing fields as a child. In her deepest misery, when she barely had enough to eat, she found inspiration and solace in the celestial dancers that appear on Cambodian temples. Now she shuttles between Los Angeles and Takhmao, Cambodia.
``Sophiline had created this amazing work called `Samritechak,' a Cambodian classical dance interpretation of `Othello,''' Frumberg says. ``My organization then helped premiere it in Cambodia.''
Frumberg introduced ``Samritechak'' to director Sellars, who brought it to the Venice Biennale in 2000 and then commissioned ``Pamina Devi'' for a Mozart festival in Vienna last year.
``I'm now developing a new piece based on people interviewed by the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which supplies lots of the information being used in the current Khmer Rouge trials,'' Frumberg says. ``We want to perform this in the provinces of Cambodia for Cambodians.''
He still loves taking friends to Angkor Wat, Cambodia's most famous temple. ``There's a certain bend in the road where you see the first tower of that temple,'' says Frumberg. ``Amazingly, after 30 visits, there is still that little extra beat my heart takes when I see that tower.''
``Pamina Devi'' runs through Oct. 14 at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Ave., Manhattan. Information: +1-212-242-0800; http://www.joyce.org . To learn more about Amrita: http://www.amritaperformingarts.org .
(Robert Hilferty is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this story: Robert Hilferty in New York at
rhilferty@verizon.net
Monday, October 08, 2007
Phoenix Risen
October 15, 2007by Joan Acocella
The New Yorker (USA)
Who knew that Cambodian classical dance had anything in common with “The Magic Flute”? Peter Sellars. He commissioned Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, the director of the Khmer Arts Academy, to create a new version of the opera in honor of Mozart’s two-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday, last year. The resulting piece, “Pamina Devi,” which will open at the Joyce on Oct. 9, has a new score, for a pinpeat ensemble (drums, gongs, etc.), and it is a Cambodian dance-drama. This means that the twenty-two dancers wear costumes that belong in a museum and move very slowly, flexing their lovely fingers like spider chrysanthemums. But the dramatis personae are much the same as Mozart’s, and the spirit is similar: sweet and hopeful. At the end, Shapiro’s heroine refuses to choose between the Queen of the Night and Sarastro. Instead, she sets off into the unknown, to create a just society. This is clearly a prayer for Cambodia, where, during Pol Pot’s regime, an estimated eighty per cent of artists died. Shapiro’s company rose from those ashes.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Cambodia’s Spirits Stir, Toe to Spine
Members of the Khmer Arts Academy performing “Pamina Devi,” an adaptation of Mozart’s “Magic Flute.” (Photo: John Vink for The New York Times)October 7, 2007
By ERIKA KINETZ
New York Times (USA)
Dance
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
THE spirits came in February — teachers, giants and angels. The first arrived on a windy Thursday, and they stayed, roiling on in succession through the small, supple body of Chao Socheata until her distraught mother dragged her to the local pagoda, where a monk pressed three broken sticks of incense to her head, beat her with the stems of a banana tree and wrapped a magical string around her waist. Protection enough, as it turned out, against the darker aspects of the spirit world.
Ms. Chao Socheata — a 21-year-old dancer in “Pamina Devi,” the choreographer Sophiline Cheam Shapiro’s retelling of Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” which opens a six-day run on Tuesday at the Joyce Theater in Manhattan — spent much of February weeping, part of it yelling and part of it in a kind of transfixed ecstasy in which she would teach things that she did not know.
When the spirit teachers came upon her, munificent and full of good, old ideas, the honor and the revelations were almost too great for her to bear. On Feb. 18, she passed out. That’s when the monks were called in. But the lesson had been well taught: in Cambodian dance, as in Cambodian life, the spirits are always watching.
So, to some extent, is the government.
In Cambodia, dance has long been a function of the state — an emanation of power, first the king’s, now that of the strongman government of Prime Minister Hun Sen. The state-run Royal University of Fine Arts here in the capital has a virtual monopoly on arts training, and many graduates go on to work in the ministry of culture or teach at the university.
In recent years, however, an avant garde of Cambodian artists, Ms. Shapiro among them, has been creating an alternative to the state’s model. To make new art, they are finding, they have to change the way art is made.
“Pamina Devi,” which the director Peter Sellars commissioned for the New Crowned Hope festival in Vienna last year, is a case in point.
Last year, Ms. Shapiro, who had moved to the United States in 1991, returned to Cambodia with her American husband, John. They set up shop on a five-acre estate just outside Phnom Penh, and early this year they founded the 31-member Khmer Arts Ensemble, Cambodia’s first full-time independent dance company since the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975.
Dancers at the ensemble make $100 a month for full-time work. The ministry of culture is Cambodia’s largest employer of dancers, paying them $30 to $50 a month, plus performance fees. (In comparison, jobs in local garment factories pay a minimum of $50 a month.)
“Our goal over the next few years is to get up to a more livable wage, $300 to $500” a month, said Mr. Shapiro, executive director of the Khmer Arts Academy, an umbrella group that includes the performance ensemble as well as a dance school in Long Beach, Calif.
The academy’s total budget has grown to more than $500,000 this year, from $80,000 when they founded it in 2002. The Shapiros have grand plans. Mr. Shapiro says they’d like to start a dance research and publishing arm, an international exchange program and a costume shop. One can have such dreams in Cambodia, largely because costs in the country are so low.
“We thought about doing this in the United States,” Mr. Shapiro said. “The economics didn’t work out. An ensemble of 31 members — that’s a ballet company. It’s really expensive.” In Cambodia, $100 a month is a decent wage.
Ms. Shapiro has deep roots within the government system. She was in the first class to graduate from the Royal University of Fine Arts after it reopened following the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, and taught there for several years. Her uncle was the country’s minister of culture in the 1980s.
Mr. Shapiro says the couple tried at first to work within the system, but it wasn’t a good fit. “The university, like other systems in Cambodia, is a hierarchical system of patronage,” he said. “Sophiline doesn’t have a high position in government. She’s an individual artist. She says: ‘I’m going to make a dance. I’m going to pay for it.’ She’s cutting off a lot of levels above her.”
“We want to take classical dance and give it more emotion and drama, to make dances that are critical of society,” he continued. Old-guard government officials “scratch their heads and say, ‘Critical? That’s not what dance is for,’ ” he said. “We have an entirely different concept of what art can be used for.”
The Khmer Rouge, radical Communists who oversaw the deaths of about a quarter of the population in the late 1970s, devastated classical Cambodian arts. In the uneasy years since their overthrow by the Vietnamese, most artistic energies — and money — went into cultural preservation. Only now has attention begun to shift toward creation.
That shift has not gone down altogether smoothly. “Pamina Devi” is, in part, a story about the clash between men and women. But Mr. Shapiro said the ministry of culture would not let the ensemble use male dancers — too radical a departure from the female-dominated canon. Instead, the women playing male characters wear pants.
Khim Sarith and Him Chhem, secretaries of state at the culture ministry, said they were unaware of the decision by a previous minister to bar the company from using men. Through a translator, Mr. Him Chhem explained that classical court dance was traditionally dominated by women. He said he had yet to see “Pamina Devi” but hoped Ms. Shapiro would ground her work in a clear understanding of the form.
The government can exert subtle control in many ways short of outright censorship. Some of Ms. Shapiro’s dancers still work for the ministry and thus are especially vulnerable.
“We are glad to have more dance companies if they can apply all the ministry’s requirements to preserve our Cambodian dance,” Mr. Khim Sarith said.
Innovation is fine, he said, as long as it does not damage the integrity of the form. “We need preservation and innovation,” he said, “but the innovation must apply the basic foundation and style of the dance.”
Cambodian dance began as a form of religious devotion, and those spiritual roots are very much on Ms. Shapiro’s mind. The week before leaving for the five-city United States tour, Ms. Shapiro and her company held a lavish “teacher spirit” ceremony (“Sampeah Kru”) at their studios. On silver trays, they laid out offerings of pigs’ heads, chickens, ducks and tropical fruits. There were thick banana stalks garlanded with fresh jasmine and topped with hard-boiled eggs.
“It’s a way of showing respect for our teachers and asking the teachers to guide us,” Ms. Shapiro said. “We believe our teachers’ spirits are watching us, to make sure we respect the dance and aren’t fooling around.”
Classical Cambodian court dance, of which “Pamina Devi” is an example, consists of a slow unfolding of fixed gestures. Hands open into flowers; fingers fold into thorns or trace the path of a tear. Everything curves. Toes curl up, fingers bend backward, the spine takes on a dangerous sway. It’s best, really, to give up all modern notions of time and accept that this dance can be no more rushed than the sea.
“Dances were a form of prayer: they connect earth to heaven,” Ms. Shapiro said. “The slowness is to maintain a sense of spirituality. It is a way of praying.”
She has turned Mozart’s “Magic Flute” into a kind of modern Cambodian morality tale. Depending on one’s perspective, it’s about responsibility shirked, the dangers of ideology, the children of conflict and one young woman who grows up to find strength in herself.
“There’s a new energy coming up,” Ms. Shapiro said. “There’s a desire to catch up with the rest of the world. We’ve been falling behind for so many years; we want to catch up. The nation is in a process of transforming.”
Her distinctive blend of old and new is an inspiration, said Hang Borin, 27, a teacher at the Royal University of Fine Arts, who started an experimental dance ensemble called Trei Visay (Compass) with his friends last year. “She brings foreign stories and makes classical dances,” he said. “She has good ideas.”
Pumtheara Chenda, 21, who dances the role of Pamina Devi and used to perform with the Ministry of Culture’s classical dance troupe, said she liked working with Ms. Shapiro because she learned about the depths of a dance, not merely its steps.
“When I performed with the ministry, I just know how to perform, but I don’t know what it means,” she said. “They don’t explain about the story. They just say, ‘Do this, do that.’ I knew nothing. With Sophiline, I know the story.”
Ms. Chao Socheata, who has recovered from the spirits that ailed her earlier this year, plays Preah Arun Tipadey, the Sarastro role. She likes the story of Pamina Devi, who is caught in a battle between her mother and a father figure, “because it’s about parents who don’t understand their children and don’t pay attention to their children,” she said through a translator. “It relates to my personal life.”
She said that the spirits still visit sometimes when she dances. “My body knows the spirits come,” she said. “But it’s just to watch, not to possess.”
Ms. Chao Socheata — a 21-year-old dancer in “Pamina Devi,” the choreographer Sophiline Cheam Shapiro’s retelling of Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” which opens a six-day run on Tuesday at the Joyce Theater in Manhattan — spent much of February weeping, part of it yelling and part of it in a kind of transfixed ecstasy in which she would teach things that she did not know.
When the spirit teachers came upon her, munificent and full of good, old ideas, the honor and the revelations were almost too great for her to bear. On Feb. 18, she passed out. That’s when the monks were called in. But the lesson had been well taught: in Cambodian dance, as in Cambodian life, the spirits are always watching.
So, to some extent, is the government.
In Cambodia, dance has long been a function of the state — an emanation of power, first the king’s, now that of the strongman government of Prime Minister Hun Sen. The state-run Royal University of Fine Arts here in the capital has a virtual monopoly on arts training, and many graduates go on to work in the ministry of culture or teach at the university.
In recent years, however, an avant garde of Cambodian artists, Ms. Shapiro among them, has been creating an alternative to the state’s model. To make new art, they are finding, they have to change the way art is made.
“Pamina Devi,” which the director Peter Sellars commissioned for the New Crowned Hope festival in Vienna last year, is a case in point.
Last year, Ms. Shapiro, who had moved to the United States in 1991, returned to Cambodia with her American husband, John. They set up shop on a five-acre estate just outside Phnom Penh, and early this year they founded the 31-member Khmer Arts Ensemble, Cambodia’s first full-time independent dance company since the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975.
Dancers at the ensemble make $100 a month for full-time work. The ministry of culture is Cambodia’s largest employer of dancers, paying them $30 to $50 a month, plus performance fees. (In comparison, jobs in local garment factories pay a minimum of $50 a month.)
“Our goal over the next few years is to get up to a more livable wage, $300 to $500” a month, said Mr. Shapiro, executive director of the Khmer Arts Academy, an umbrella group that includes the performance ensemble as well as a dance school in Long Beach, Calif.
The academy’s total budget has grown to more than $500,000 this year, from $80,000 when they founded it in 2002. The Shapiros have grand plans. Mr. Shapiro says they’d like to start a dance research and publishing arm, an international exchange program and a costume shop. One can have such dreams in Cambodia, largely because costs in the country are so low.
“We thought about doing this in the United States,” Mr. Shapiro said. “The economics didn’t work out. An ensemble of 31 members — that’s a ballet company. It’s really expensive.” In Cambodia, $100 a month is a decent wage.
Ms. Shapiro has deep roots within the government system. She was in the first class to graduate from the Royal University of Fine Arts after it reopened following the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, and taught there for several years. Her uncle was the country’s minister of culture in the 1980s.
Mr. Shapiro says the couple tried at first to work within the system, but it wasn’t a good fit. “The university, like other systems in Cambodia, is a hierarchical system of patronage,” he said. “Sophiline doesn’t have a high position in government. She’s an individual artist. She says: ‘I’m going to make a dance. I’m going to pay for it.’ She’s cutting off a lot of levels above her.”
“We want to take classical dance and give it more emotion and drama, to make dances that are critical of society,” he continued. Old-guard government officials “scratch their heads and say, ‘Critical? That’s not what dance is for,’ ” he said. “We have an entirely different concept of what art can be used for.”
The Khmer Rouge, radical Communists who oversaw the deaths of about a quarter of the population in the late 1970s, devastated classical Cambodian arts. In the uneasy years since their overthrow by the Vietnamese, most artistic energies — and money — went into cultural preservation. Only now has attention begun to shift toward creation.
That shift has not gone down altogether smoothly. “Pamina Devi” is, in part, a story about the clash between men and women. But Mr. Shapiro said the ministry of culture would not let the ensemble use male dancers — too radical a departure from the female-dominated canon. Instead, the women playing male characters wear pants.
Khim Sarith and Him Chhem, secretaries of state at the culture ministry, said they were unaware of the decision by a previous minister to bar the company from using men. Through a translator, Mr. Him Chhem explained that classical court dance was traditionally dominated by women. He said he had yet to see “Pamina Devi” but hoped Ms. Shapiro would ground her work in a clear understanding of the form.
The government can exert subtle control in many ways short of outright censorship. Some of Ms. Shapiro’s dancers still work for the ministry and thus are especially vulnerable.
“We are glad to have more dance companies if they can apply all the ministry’s requirements to preserve our Cambodian dance,” Mr. Khim Sarith said.
Innovation is fine, he said, as long as it does not damage the integrity of the form. “We need preservation and innovation,” he said, “but the innovation must apply the basic foundation and style of the dance.”
Cambodian dance began as a form of religious devotion, and those spiritual roots are very much on Ms. Shapiro’s mind. The week before leaving for the five-city United States tour, Ms. Shapiro and her company held a lavish “teacher spirit” ceremony (“Sampeah Kru”) at their studios. On silver trays, they laid out offerings of pigs’ heads, chickens, ducks and tropical fruits. There were thick banana stalks garlanded with fresh jasmine and topped with hard-boiled eggs.
“It’s a way of showing respect for our teachers and asking the teachers to guide us,” Ms. Shapiro said. “We believe our teachers’ spirits are watching us, to make sure we respect the dance and aren’t fooling around.”
Classical Cambodian court dance, of which “Pamina Devi” is an example, consists of a slow unfolding of fixed gestures. Hands open into flowers; fingers fold into thorns or trace the path of a tear. Everything curves. Toes curl up, fingers bend backward, the spine takes on a dangerous sway. It’s best, really, to give up all modern notions of time and accept that this dance can be no more rushed than the sea.
“Dances were a form of prayer: they connect earth to heaven,” Ms. Shapiro said. “The slowness is to maintain a sense of spirituality. It is a way of praying.”
She has turned Mozart’s “Magic Flute” into a kind of modern Cambodian morality tale. Depending on one’s perspective, it’s about responsibility shirked, the dangers of ideology, the children of conflict and one young woman who grows up to find strength in herself.
“There’s a new energy coming up,” Ms. Shapiro said. “There’s a desire to catch up with the rest of the world. We’ve been falling behind for so many years; we want to catch up. The nation is in a process of transforming.”
Her distinctive blend of old and new is an inspiration, said Hang Borin, 27, a teacher at the Royal University of Fine Arts, who started an experimental dance ensemble called Trei Visay (Compass) with his friends last year. “She brings foreign stories and makes classical dances,” he said. “She has good ideas.”
Pumtheara Chenda, 21, who dances the role of Pamina Devi and used to perform with the Ministry of Culture’s classical dance troupe, said she liked working with Ms. Shapiro because she learned about the depths of a dance, not merely its steps.
“When I performed with the ministry, I just know how to perform, but I don’t know what it means,” she said. “They don’t explain about the story. They just say, ‘Do this, do that.’ I knew nothing. With Sophiline, I know the story.”
Ms. Chao Socheata, who has recovered from the spirits that ailed her earlier this year, plays Preah Arun Tipadey, the Sarastro role. She likes the story of Pamina Devi, who is caught in a battle between her mother and a father figure, “because it’s about parents who don’t understand their children and don’t pay attention to their children,” she said through a translator. “It relates to my personal life.”
She said that the spirits still visit sometimes when she dances. “My body knows the spirits come,” she said. “But it’s just to watch, not to possess.”
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Kirov, ABT and a Cambodian Treat
Sophiline Cheam Shapiro's "Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute" comes to the Clarice Smith Center on Oct. 25 and 26. (Photo Credit: By John Shapiro -- Khmer Arts Academy Photo)Sunday, September 9, 2007
Sarah Kaufman
Washington Post (USA)
"PAMINA DEVI"
For Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, dance was the lifeline she clung to after surviving the Khmer Rouge regime's atrocities in her native Cambodia. But after mastering Cambodian classical dance, an intricate, spiritually motivated art form that was all but wiped out during the bloody dictatorship of the 1970s, Shapiro has taken its traditions a step further.
Audiences will see Cambodian dance wedded to Western fantasy when Cheam Shapiro presents her reimagining of the famed Mozart opera in "Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute," Oct. 25 and 26 at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. The production, Cheam Shapiro has said, is an attempt to reconcile her homeland's repressive past with its ancient magnificence.
While it may strain the imagination to picture Mozart's joyous, upbeat romp told by slow-moving, meditative Cambodian dancers in heavily ornate costumes, there is also something apt about the combination. The 18th-century opera hailed the Enlightenment, and its echoes are found in the journey taken by the heroine of "Pamina Devi," who endeavors to transcend the darkness in which she has been raised. Angkor, centuries-old seat of the wealthy Khmer empire, stands in for the glories of imperial Vienna.
At the very least, this tantalizing event, performed by 32 dancers, musicians and singers, promises to be a chief curiosity of the season. It could also be more. After all, Cambodian dance, which has struggled to reroot itself in its own country, doesn't figure too highly on the local dance scene, making this an especially welcome engagement.
KIROV BALLET'S "LA BAYADERE"
Betting on this performance is as sound a gamble as one can make. The ballet by 19th-century genius Marius Petipa is remarkable not for its narrative strengths but for its metaphorical, even meta-mystical, ones.
As in "Giselle," the heroine dies early on, and she is reunited with her grieving lover in the afterlife. But unlike "Giselle," what happens in "La Bayadere's" signature second-act ghost story really has no story. It's a purely spiritual experience, for the audience as well as for the bereft lover Solor, who conjures it up after a few tokes on his hookah.
Count on the Kirov Ballet to invest "La Bayadere" with crystalline precision and operatic grandeur. In fact, the ballet shares more than a few details with the opera "Aida" (Petipa had been staging dances for the opera when he began work on the ballet); both take place in sun-drenched Eastern locales (the ballet in India, the opera in Egypt) and turn on romances between slaves and nobility.
The ballet demands a musically sensitive, effortlessly cohesive and technically unblemished corps; it also requires soloists to handle some of the most difficult individual variations in the canon, and dancers in the three principal roles with consummate acting chops. No wobbly knees need apply, and with this company, you're unlikely to see them.
AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE
There is good news and bad news about American Ballet Theatre's offerings this season. Bad news first: We will be visited, once again, by the company's muddled "Nutcracker," with its mix-ins from various other versions. The good news: ABT's new production of "The Sleeping Beauty" will follow, Jan. 29 through Feb. 3 at the Kennedy Center Opera House.
The revamped classic got middling reviews at its New York premiere in June. Given Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie's treatment of "The Nutcracker" and his heavily theatricalized "Swan Lake," it's safe to assume this ballet will be long on the dramatic effects and showy scenery. Yet be it a charmer or a turkey, I'm terribly eager to see it because (a) it's brand-new and Washington audiences routinely have to wait much more than a few months to see any newly minted New York productions and (b) it marks the return to the company of its storied former star ballerina Gelsey Kirkland, who assisted McKenzie with the choreography.
Kirkland is the divinely endowed but temperamentally unpredictable dancer who was ultimately fired from ABT while the troupe was on tour here two decades ago. After so many years away, she and her husband, dramaturge Michael Chernov, were invited to work with the ABT director to devise a "Sleeping Beauty" that reportedly streamlines the traditional choreography and places new emphasis on the Prince, who is called upon to do more than deliver one magical smooch.
Ballet is an art that relies upon the intimate dancer-to-dancer transmission of its secrets and mysteries. That the nation's premiere classical ballet company has called upon one of its greatest native-born stars to do just that is a particularly meaningful event. At the very least, Kirkland's contribution adds a bit of historical polish to the refurbishing of a workhorse ballet.
For Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, dance was the lifeline she clung to after surviving the Khmer Rouge regime's atrocities in her native Cambodia. But after mastering Cambodian classical dance, an intricate, spiritually motivated art form that was all but wiped out during the bloody dictatorship of the 1970s, Shapiro has taken its traditions a step further.
Audiences will see Cambodian dance wedded to Western fantasy when Cheam Shapiro presents her reimagining of the famed Mozart opera in "Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute," Oct. 25 and 26 at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. The production, Cheam Shapiro has said, is an attempt to reconcile her homeland's repressive past with its ancient magnificence.
While it may strain the imagination to picture Mozart's joyous, upbeat romp told by slow-moving, meditative Cambodian dancers in heavily ornate costumes, there is also something apt about the combination. The 18th-century opera hailed the Enlightenment, and its echoes are found in the journey taken by the heroine of "Pamina Devi," who endeavors to transcend the darkness in which she has been raised. Angkor, centuries-old seat of the wealthy Khmer empire, stands in for the glories of imperial Vienna.
At the very least, this tantalizing event, performed by 32 dancers, musicians and singers, promises to be a chief curiosity of the season. It could also be more. After all, Cambodian dance, which has struggled to reroot itself in its own country, doesn't figure too highly on the local dance scene, making this an especially welcome engagement.
KIROV BALLET'S "LA BAYADERE"
Betting on this performance is as sound a gamble as one can make. The ballet by 19th-century genius Marius Petipa is remarkable not for its narrative strengths but for its metaphorical, even meta-mystical, ones.
As in "Giselle," the heroine dies early on, and she is reunited with her grieving lover in the afterlife. But unlike "Giselle," what happens in "La Bayadere's" signature second-act ghost story really has no story. It's a purely spiritual experience, for the audience as well as for the bereft lover Solor, who conjures it up after a few tokes on his hookah.
Count on the Kirov Ballet to invest "La Bayadere" with crystalline precision and operatic grandeur. In fact, the ballet shares more than a few details with the opera "Aida" (Petipa had been staging dances for the opera when he began work on the ballet); both take place in sun-drenched Eastern locales (the ballet in India, the opera in Egypt) and turn on romances between slaves and nobility.
The ballet demands a musically sensitive, effortlessly cohesive and technically unblemished corps; it also requires soloists to handle some of the most difficult individual variations in the canon, and dancers in the three principal roles with consummate acting chops. No wobbly knees need apply, and with this company, you're unlikely to see them.
AMERICAN BALLET THEATRE
There is good news and bad news about American Ballet Theatre's offerings this season. Bad news first: We will be visited, once again, by the company's muddled "Nutcracker," with its mix-ins from various other versions. The good news: ABT's new production of "The Sleeping Beauty" will follow, Jan. 29 through Feb. 3 at the Kennedy Center Opera House.
The revamped classic got middling reviews at its New York premiere in June. Given Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie's treatment of "The Nutcracker" and his heavily theatricalized "Swan Lake," it's safe to assume this ballet will be long on the dramatic effects and showy scenery. Yet be it a charmer or a turkey, I'm terribly eager to see it because (a) it's brand-new and Washington audiences routinely have to wait much more than a few months to see any newly minted New York productions and (b) it marks the return to the company of its storied former star ballerina Gelsey Kirkland, who assisted McKenzie with the choreography.
Kirkland is the divinely endowed but temperamentally unpredictable dancer who was ultimately fired from ABT while the troupe was on tour here two decades ago. After so many years away, she and her husband, dramaturge Michael Chernov, were invited to work with the ABT director to devise a "Sleeping Beauty" that reportedly streamlines the traditional choreography and places new emphasis on the Prince, who is called upon to do more than deliver one magical smooch.
Ballet is an art that relies upon the intimate dancer-to-dancer transmission of its secrets and mysteries. That the nation's premiere classical ballet company has called upon one of its greatest native-born stars to do just that is a particularly meaningful event. At the very least, Kirkland's contribution adds a bit of historical polish to the refurbishing of a workhorse ballet.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Tradition Endures in New Generation of Dancers
Nuch Sarita, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
24 August 2007
Classical dance has endured as Cambodia's most resilient art form. Transferred from generation to generation, mostly through women, it is for Cambodians a powerful source of identity, rebirth and vitality.
It survives still in an upcoming group of young dancers.
No one knows this better than Thong Kim An, a master dance instructor, leading a troupe of 21 dancers through an episode of the Ramayana at the Sovannaphum Theater in Phnom Penh this weekend.
"Ms. Thong Kim An specialized in the Yeak (Giant) figure and is a member of a family where Yeak dancing has been passed on for four generations," said Suon Bunrith, cultural coordinator of the Amrita Performing Arts School.
Thong has been dancing since age 6 and now teaches at the Royal University of Fine Arts.
She spent 47 days recently training dancers for the upcoming performance, including Panh Sibxy Na, a 16-year-old who will make his debut at this weekend's performance.
Panh Sixby Na, who has a natural ability in combative dance, will "capture the imagination and leave the public gazing with emotion at his movements," according to the Bosbapanh dance company.
It survives still in an upcoming group of young dancers.
No one knows this better than Thong Kim An, a master dance instructor, leading a troupe of 21 dancers through an episode of the Ramayana at the Sovannaphum Theater in Phnom Penh this weekend.
"Ms. Thong Kim An specialized in the Yeak (Giant) figure and is a member of a family where Yeak dancing has been passed on for four generations," said Suon Bunrith, cultural coordinator of the Amrita Performing Arts School.
Thong has been dancing since age 6 and now teaches at the Royal University of Fine Arts.
She spent 47 days recently training dancers for the upcoming performance, including Panh Sibxy Na, a 16-year-old who will make his debut at this weekend's performance.
Panh Sixby Na, who has a natural ability in combative dance, will "capture the imagination and leave the public gazing with emotion at his movements," according to the Bosbapanh dance company.
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