Dancers work to revive Cambodian traditions

BY ANITA AMIRREZVANI
Mercury News

More than 20 years after Pol Pot's brutal rule of Cambodia, the country's dancers and musicians are still struggling to rebuild their artistic heritage.

About 15 to 25 percent of Cambodians died from disease, starvation and execution from 1975 to 1979, but for performing artists, the toll was even higher. Cambodian artists estimate that about 90 percent of their colleagues perished during this period.

After the death of so many specialists in the 1970s, the dance repertory was thrown into jeopardy. In 1981, surviving dancers and musicians gathered together in Phnom Penh to face the challenge of reconstructing the dances they still remembered.

The results of their revival will be on display today and Sunday at University of California-Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, where more than 40 dancers, singers and musicians from Cambodia's Royal University of Fine Arts will appear as part of their first U.S. tour since 1990.

The Pol Pot era left a gaping hole in a country where the dance and music repertory was learned orally. For hundreds of years, master teachers had passed on their knowledge through hands-on instruction. Teachers shadowed the dancers and corrected their moves. Knowledge was further centralized in individual dancers who specialized in one specific role.

Proeung Chhieng, dean of choreographic arts at Cambodia's Royal University of Fine Arts, is the tour's artistic director. Chhieng was born into the tradition of Cambodian court dance. To be accepted as a dancer, he had to be offered to Queen Kossamak Nearyrath, mother of Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Palace dancers were an elite group who performed for royalty and were thought to have the power to intercede with the heavens.

As a child, Chhieng specialized in the important role of Hanuman, a monkey-general in the Cambodian version of the "Ramayana," whose movements are based on those of monkeys. As one of the youngest monkeys ever, Chhieng followed Prince Sihanouk on his official tours to Egypt and Yugoslavia and performed as part of his entourage.

Time of upheaval

Sihanouk was ousted in 1970, and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. City dwellers were evacuated to the countryside, and educated people associated with the palace or the temples became special targets. The Khmer Rouge forbade traditional arts and religion, substituting songs and dances with a revolutionary theme.

At the time, Chhieng was studying choreography in North Korea, but in 1978 he decided to return to Cambodia. "I wanted to come back to help rebuild our country, particularly in the cultural field," he says. "Unfortunately, when I came back, I was helpless because the Khmer Rouge did not allow me to dance, and forced me to work in the fields like other people. I was hiding my identity and I worked like a peasant and a slave."

Cambodia is now a constitutional monarchy. For the past 20 years, Chhieng has been one of many Cambodian performers who have devoted their lives to reconstructing the company's dance repertory and documenting it for future generations. "As Hanuman, I remember everything that I did, and sometimes I can remember some movement and gesture of other roles played with me," Chhieng says. "Other senior teachers do the same thing."

Cambodian dance spans a wide range of styles. There are dance-dramas such as the "Reamker," the Cambodian version of the "Ramayana"; abstract dances spotlighting characters from mythology; and folk dances such as those celebrating the harvest.

'Spirit of Cambodia'

The program in Berkeley is called "Dance: The Spirit of Cambodia" for a good reason. In Cambodia, dance has a cultural role that transcends sheer entertainment. Toni Shapiro-Phim, a research associate at UC-Berkeley and project scholar for the dance tour, was impressed when she discovered that even under very dangerous and dispiriting conditions, many Cambodian people remained devoted to the arts.

Shapiro-Phim worked a Cambodian refugee camp in Thailand in the 1980s. The camp housed Cambodians who had fled the regime that ruled their country after Pol Pot. "Thousands of Cambodian refugees would come out in the tropical sun and stand with no cover to see their fellow refugees dancing on these makeshift stages," she recalls. "Then artillery shells would fall and people would run for cover and find their families. When the barrage stopped, they'd come back to finish the performance."

One reason for the widespread Cambodian interest in the dance tradition, which goes back hundreds of years, may be that it communicates essential cultural and moral codes. "Many people recognize dancers as embodying ideals of Cambodian behavior, gender relations and physical deportment," she says.

Dance is known for being sinuous and flowing. Shapiro-Phim says the dance aesthetic may be inspired by the shape of a sacred sea serpent, whose image appears often in Cambodia and is thought to be a bridge between earth and heaven. Even the basic movements of the dancers— their curving fingers, which can reach back to their forearms, their arched backs and flexed feet— create a sinuous look.

Chhieng points out that Cambodian dance is rooted in the country's religious and belief systems: Buddhism, Brahmanism and animism. This weekend, his dancers will demonstrate a ceremony that pays tribute to spirits of the ancestors, a traditional part of every performance. It's both an expression of gratitude and an appeal for the future. "We offer some fruit, candles and incense to our spirits, and we hope that the spirits will take care of us and our people," Chhieng says.

Contact Anita Amirrezvani at aamirrezvani@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5756. Fax (408) 271-3786.

Dance: The Spirit of Cambodia
Where: Zellerbach Hall, UC-Berkeley
When: 8 tonight, 3 p.m. Sunday
Tickets: $20-$32; (510) 642-9988

Pre-performance lectures: With artistic director Proeung Chhieng 7 p.m. today and 2 p.m. Sunday

Film: "The Tenth Dancer," 11 a.m. today, 2223 Fulton St., 6th floor, Berkeley; free. This poignant one-hour film, directed by Sally Ingleton, spotlights Pen Sok Chea, a dancer who lost six brothers and sisters during Pol Pot's rule. She will talk after the screening.

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