The Significance of Dance in Contemporary Cambodia

Posted on September 09, 2010

By Toni Shapiro -Phim

Dancers in Cambodia are responding to a contemporary environment that includes both lightning-speed development and reminders of a devastatingly violent past. During the Khmer Rouge regime (1975-1979), nearly a third of Cambodia's population perished. Large numbers of professionally trained dancers died, with a mere 10-20 percent surviving the genocide. Classical dance, with long historical roots intertwined with spirituality and with the monarchy, was nearly wiped out.  With the loss of so much embodied knowledge, government arts officials have publicly prioritized the preservation of Cambodia's traditional dance heritage for more than 30 years. Stylistic innovation, officials claim, threatens efforts to recover and rebuild Cambodia's arts. As a result, younger generations of dancers - students of genocide survivors who had danced before the war, and their students - embody the main force of creativity in professional dance circles in Cambodia today.

Traditional repertoire and customary themes

Government-sponsored dance activity, beyond the teaching and performance of selections from the traditional repertoire of classical and folk pieces, includes both the re-staging and completion of previously unfinished works, and the creation of new choreographies for state celebrations and festivals. These dances have been fashioned strictly within the classical or folk movement vocabulary, representing customary themes, such as the celestial, royal, and sweeping mytho-historical focus of the classical repertoire. Thus, while the production of contemporary work in the state institutions of the arts, including the Secondary School of Fine Arts, is ongoing, it is most often only specific storylines that are new.

"Robam Sahasamay" - contemporary dance

Until very recently, discussion of professional Cambodian dance within the country revolved predominantly around "tradition."  Though innovation has been a hallmark of even traditional forms of performance, Cambodia's dancers have over the past several years come to translate the phrase "contemporary dance" as robam (dance) sahasamay (modern/of the same time period), acknowledging that this is a new construct on their part.  Nonetheless, Cambodian choreographers, and the institutions supporting their work, are still often tied to concerns about national identity and history, and influenced by a traditionalist discourse.  Many sahasamay dances employ common conventions of Western contemporary (and other) dance such as pedestrian costumes and movements, a variety of musical accompaniment, innovative choreographic patterns, projections and spoken word.  These dances have often taken as a central theme the desire of the younger generation to explore new creative grounds while still honoring their country's long artistic heritage.  Despite occasional criticism from teachers and peers for straying from strictly "Cambodian" performances, these artists are exploring their unique creative voices through movement and music, looking to literature, biography and autobiography, emotion, nature and politics for inspiration.

Expanding possibilities

The neo-classical choreography of Sophiline Cheam Shapiro represents another approach to creativity. Inspired by themes other than the divide between tradition and innovation, Sophiline experiments with and flexes the muscles of the robust classical aesthetic. Her company, the Khmer Arts Ensemble, established in Cambodia in 2007, performs both contemporary creations and works from the classical canon. Sophiline has a firm base as an accomplished performer and teacher of classical dance. She was a member of the first generation to study dance professionally after the ousting of the Khmer Rouge.

Since 1999, Sophiline has been expanding classical dance's possibilities through the development of original dance dramas that break with received storylines, and through experimentation with gesture, vocabulary, partnering, movement patterns and costume - all of which are often officially considered inviolate. Sophiline also makes pioneering use of traditional musical arrangements and instrumentation.  These rigorous explorations link Sophiline to dance-makers across the globe such as Senegal's Germaine Acogny, Indonesia's Sardono, and the late Chandralekha from India.

In The Lives of Giants, you see and hear all of these elements at play.  Choreographic patterns are dynamic and sometimes asymmetrical; movement flows out of but is not restricted to codified gesture, vocabulary or posture.  Melodies that never before accompanied classical dance are employed to great emotional effect.  Merrily Murray-Walsh's costumes synchronize with Marcus Doshi's scenic abstractions of water and light while referring to traditional motifs in decorative patterns and accessories.  The lighter weight of the printed costumes harmonizes with both canonical and innovative movements.  Akaeng Khameaso's mask incorporates a metal mesh with traditional papier-mâché elements, allowing dancers to breathe and see more easily

This essay is adapted from "Professional Dancers and their Contemporary Context in Cambodia" http://www.goethe.de/ins/id/lp/prj/tac/zgt/kam/enindex.htm)

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