Organizer: Center for Khmer Studies 

Description:

For the past two years, the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts has spearheaded a classical dance research initiative which includes documentation of movement technique and translation of some seminal texts about Cambodian Dance into Khmer. Alongside these efforts, Dr. Toni Shapiro-Phim’s collection of hundreds of hours of videotaped material of Cambodian dance and dancers from 30 years ago is now being digitized. It will soon be deposited at the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center and made accessible to the interested public. To ensure that these materials, which document dance training and performance in Site 2 Displaced Persons Camp in 1989 and inside Cambodia in the early 1990s, are as useful as possible to Cambodia’s artists, it has been dancers themselves, including many who appear in the tapes, who have been watching hours of material, developing related explanatory notes, and making concrete plans for use of the tapes for education and research. This panel will feature the perspectives of several generations of Cambodian choreographers, performers, and teachers, as they reflect on this videotape preservation project and the content of the tapes. The discussion will also cover Cambodia’s enormous losses to its cultural heritage and cultural continuity during years of war and genocide in the late 20th century, and the tireless work of surviving dancers (post-genocide) to recreate as much of the repertoire as they could, some of which is captured in these tapes.

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