Choreographers in Cambodia

Working with the country’s finest performing artists, Sophiline Cheam Shapiro has infused Cambodian dance with new ideas and energy, and dramatically expanded its global reach at the same time. Many of her dances explore challenging moral questions in response to a culture that once suffered the complete collapse of civil society.

Sophiline was among the first generation to study and perform classical dance at the School of Fine Arts, Cambodia’s national performing arts conservatory, following the fall of the Khmer Rouge. She toured with the School’s ensemble throughout Cambodia, India, the Soviet Union, the USA, and Vietnam, and worked at the School’s classical dance faculty from 1988 to 1991. Sophiline gained a BA at the World Arts & Cultures Department of the University of California, Los Angeles, where she later completed studies for an MA in dance ethnology. She is the Artistic Director of the Khmer Arts Ensemble, and lectures and teaches internationally.


Artist Statement

“Through my choreography, I explore themes that resonate within the traumatized and rapidly changing society of Cambodia, but that also ask questions that have remained relevant throughout human history. These themes have included the accountability of leadership, the transformation of identity among migrants, the ambiguous relationship between women and traditional culture, the dangers of extreme rhetoric and the suffering caused by repeated cycles of violence. Despite the gravity of these concerns, most of my dances are hopeful and present an alternative path of reconciliation and transcendence. All of my work celebrates nuance, beauty, and the human spirit.

Having been trained among the first generation of students to study dance in the aftermath of Pol Pot’s ‘Killing Fields’, I discovered the power of dance to heal at an early age. As a teenager, I toured my country and the world, reminding humanity that Cambodian culture is known for more positive and more enduring legacies than auto-genocide. As an adult, after encountering powerful and thoughtful works of art abroad, I realized that Cambodian dance could be, needs to be and, in fact, has long been an expression of my culture’s contemporary condition. Whether working in the highly codified classical form or my own boran chhnay style, I see dance as a tool for engaging audiences that are hungry for living culture.

Though I am unmistakably Cambodian, I am also a citizen of the world, and my dances reflect this borderless view. Whether presenting work to audiences in Amsterdam, Hong Kong or New York, I intend for it to contribute to the global conversation of arts and ideas. I may come from a small and impoverished country, but my art can share the stage with anyone’s.”
Sophiline Cheam Shapiro


Portrait

Re-imagining the classical

Sophiline’s Samritechak, which shocked audiences when it premiered in Phnom Penh in 2000 by bringing the tragic power of Shakespeare’s Othello to an aesthetic form often devoid of such dramatic tension, became the first new evening-length Cambodian classical dance of the post-Khmer Rouge era to tour internationally. The Glass Box (2002) further challenged convention by turning a critical eye toward how Cambodian women are viewed and treated in traditional culture. Her Seasons of Migration (2005) translated the culture shock experienced by migrant Cambodians throughout the 1980s diaspora into compelling mythology. Her Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute (2006), which premiered at Vienna’s New Crowned Hope Festival in 2006 and toured the USA and Europe during the 2007-08 season, reinterpreted Mozart’s Enlightenment-era utopian opera as a warning against extreme ideologies of radical transformation.

Personal boran chhnay style

Spiral XII, a collaborative piece undertaken with composer Chinary Ung and performed with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, and Shir Ha-Shirim, set to the music of composer John Zorn, premiered in November 2008. Both works showcase Sophiline’s distinctive new boran chhnay style, which pushes the boundaries of Cambodia’s exquisite classicism through the use of a less restrained gestural vocabulary, a more fluid relationship between movement and music, and sheerer costuming. In September 2010, she will premiere her new concert-length dance drama, The Lives of Giants, in the USA, as part of a nationwide tour before returning to Phnom Penh for its Cambodian premiere.

As the founding Artistic Director of trans-national arts organization Khmer Arts, Sophiline has worked extensively with the renowned Khmer Arts Ensemble, the organization’s 30-member dance company, since 2006.

Sophiline has won international recognition for her works, and was the first choreographer to receive Japan’s Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture. She has been awarded numerous other honours, including Creative Capital, Guggenheim, Irvine Dance, National Heritage and USA Knight Fellowships.

Among Sophiline’s essays are: “Songs My Enemies Taught Me,” published in Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors (1997, Yale University Press); “Cambodian Classical Dance and the Individual Artist,” published in Dance, Human Rights, and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion (2008, Scarecrow Press); “Seasons of Migration,” published in Cultural Identities: Tokyo to Bombay (2009, Centre national de la danse); and “Dancing Off Center,” in Beyond the Apsara: Celebrating Dance in Cambodia (2009, Routledge Press). /Toni Shapiro-Phim


Selected Works

Touring
The Lives of Giants tours the USA and Cambodia in autumn 2010
Rice (2009)
Spiral XII (2008)
Shir Ha-Shirim (2008)
Pamina Devi (2006)
Seasons of Migration (2005)
The Glass Box (2002)
Samritechak (2000)