{"id":180,"date":"2019-03-10T06:00:28","date_gmt":"2019-03-10T13:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/?p=999941833"},"modified":"2019-03-10T06:00:28","modified_gmt":"2019-03-10T13:00:28","slug":"it-transcends-language-young-khmer-dancers-keep-ancient-art-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/art\/it-transcends-language-young-khmer-dancers-keep-ancient-art-alive","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;It transcends language&#8217;: Young Khmer dancers keep ancient art alive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Three teenagers huddle together for a quick brainstorming session in the warehouse dance studio of the Khmer Arts Academy in the heart of Cambodia Town.<\/p>\n<p>One girl is plucking at a ukulele, another is quickly tapping impromptu prose into her phone and a boy is suggesting what movements he could do with the words. Together, they\u2019re creating a dance piece: one that\u2019s part Cambodian, part American.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c\u2018The ugly I see in myself is the beauty others see in me,\u2019\u201d Victoria Ung, 16, recites from her notes. She pauses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not really Western,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s something different, though,\u201d says her friend, 15-year-old Soriyah Sam.<\/p>\n<p>Chakra Sokhomsan, 16, suggests they try it out. Placing the phone on top of an electrical outlet box affixed to the wall, they start recording as Chakra kneels into position. Soriyah starts plucking a slow tune on her ukulele as Victoria recites the poem they created minutes earlier.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Young Khmer dancers keep ancient dance alive\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XX1r9w3AY4o?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Chakra\u2019s movements are slow and precise, gentle and deliberate. Everything from the grounding of his toes, to his fingers curved in the air, to his regal gaze into the mirror is precise and meaningful.<\/p>\n<p>This is Khmer dancing, except that Khmer (<em>Kuh-my<\/em>) dancing isn\u2019t usually performed to spoken word\u2014and it certainly isn\u2019t performed with a traditional Hawaiian instrument or choreographed by teenagers.<\/p>\n<p>The three students are part of a new program at the Khmer Arts Academy called Roots and Shoots, where students are given the opportunity to choreograph their own dances to modern music.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;With our group, we definitely want to bridge gaps between Westernized culture and Cambodian heritage,\u201d Chakra says. \u201cI think involving poetry, it definitely adds a lot of meaning to it, with purpose too. In our poem, we talk about self-worth and image and I think combining it with Cambodian dance gives a sense of identity.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At the academy\u2019s last open house in December, the three teens debuted the program by performing a Khmer dance to a slow version of Elvis\u2019 \u201cCan\u2019t Help Falling in Love\u201d played on a ukulele.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In classical Cambodian dance, you&#8217;re obviously identifying and embodying a character that&#8217;s already been created,\u201d Chakra said. \u201cBut in Roots and Shoots &#8230; it would be someone else&#8217;s story, I&#8217;d say, or it can be like an idea, like you can embody trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_999941878\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-999941878\" style=\"width: 1832px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-999941878\" src=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Roots-4-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1832\" height=\"1031\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-999941878\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the Roots and Shoots program at the Khmer Arts Academy, students are given the opportunity to use different music styles to choreograph their own Khmer dances. Here, Victoria Ung (left), Chakra Sokhomsan, and Soriyah Sam look at the practice video they made of their piece. Photo by Steven Smith.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Most of the traditional dances the students learn were either choreographed centuries ago or in the 1950s, according to Mea Lath, who is the managing director of the academy and helped implement Roots and Shoots at KAA.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was relevant to what was going on back then and the culture then and what they&#8217;ve kind of rediscovered about the culture in Cambodia as well,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Though the younger generation is drawing inspiration from modern poetry and music for their dances, the older generation hasn\u2019t seemed to raise much of a fuss over the changes in tradition.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo here, we&#8217;re rediscovering our culture and figuring out what represents us and what makes us Cambodian-Americans: why aren&#8217;t we exactly Cambodian and why aren&#8217;t we exactly Americans?&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>In traditional Cambodian dance, the dancer usually embodies a character and the characters are usually gods\u2014or at least god-like, according to Lath.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou lessen blinking even,\u201d Lath said. \u201cYou never look at anyone in the eyes because you\u2019re supposed to be a god.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We kind of prepare them for a meditation. We have them close their eyes and then we have them picture their most beautiful self, whatever that may be. Once they start to open their eyes, this magic just kind of comes out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the Apsara dance, for example, the main dancer embodies the queen of the Apsaras. She wears an ornate and intricate gold crown that is tied to her head. In another dance, the dancers might be a monkey king or a mermaid queen.<\/p>\n<p>The ancient dance, as Chakra put it, \u201ctranscends language.\u201d There are more than 4,500 gestures and each gesture has a meaning\u2014ask a Khmer dancer and they\u2019re quick to show the basics: a tree, leaves, a flower with petals, fruit and then the fruit falling and eventually growing another tree. Altogether, the movements represent the cycle of life.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_999941882\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-999941882\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-999941882\" src=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Hands-2-970x546.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-999941882\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the 4,500 hand gestures in Khmer dancing. Photo by Steven Smith.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The dance Chakra, Victoria and Soriyah are working on is still in the early stages, with the group fine-tuning it during each Saturday practice.<\/p>\n<p>Chakra, in a future piece, wants to choreograph a dance exploring the effects of trauma on Cambodians who fled to the United States during the Khmer Rouge and the secondary trauma felt by their children.<\/p>\n<p>In the 1970\u2019s, the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia committed mass genocide, wiping out more than 1.5 million people, including an estimated 90 percent of the country\u2019s artists and dancers.<\/p>\n<p>With the genocide, traditional art and dance were nearly lost. Now the academy, one of a handful in the US, is trying to hold on to it. Started by Sophiline Cheam Shapiro and John Shapiro in 2002, KAA is meant to pass on the dance tradition to the younger generation of Cambodians in America.<\/p>\n<p>Lath started at KAA when she was 12 years old, training as an apprentice dancer under Shapiro before becoming a teacher and later the managing director.<\/p>\n<p>Now the next generation is doing the same: Chakra and Victoria are both students who have recently become assistant teachers in the academy, carefully correcting the younger students and their peers by firmly pushing their shoulders back for a more serpentine back arch or adjusting their foot placement during the nearly hour-long stretching and warm up routine.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_999941875\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-999941875\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-999941875\" src=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Chakra-3-1-970x546.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-999941875\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chakra Sokhomsan corrects a student&#8217;s position in a class at the Khmer Arts Academy in warm-ups on a Saturday morning. Photo by Steven Smith.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The studio used to be packed with 50 or so kids in bright <em>kben<\/em> pants performing the careful movements together. But after grant funding ran out in 2016, the academy had to start charging parents a small tuition fee each month\u2014 $15 per month at first, and then $60 in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>During the rough two years, students started dropping out, Lath said. Although admittedly, many of the kids were likely pushed into the cultural experience by their parents when it was free and they may not have been that much into dancing, she said\u2014not everyone loves to dance.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI felt so bad having to charge them after 15 years of free lessons, but I knew the importance of why we needed the tuition, it was to keep the place open,&#8221; Lath said.<\/p>\n<p>Now with about 15 dedicated students, ranging from about five-years-old to teenagers and all girls except for Chakra, the smaller but mighty dance troupe practices in the airy and open studio. The tuition had one positive effect: the kids who ended up staying in the classes definitely want to be there.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_999941876\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-999941876\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-999941876\" src=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Mea-2-1-970x546.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-999941876\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mea Lath, managing director of the Khmer Arts Academy, corrects a student&#8217;s posture and technique during a Saturday practice. Photo by Steven Smith.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThis place is a community space, a safe place where students can discover who they are as Cambodian-Americans,\u201d Lath said.<\/p>\n<p>And the Roots and Shoots program helps the students figure that out\u2014even if it\u2019s not exactly how traditional Khmer dancing is done with live Cambodian music and hundred-year-old choreographed pieces.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn Long Beach, there are approximately 50,000 Cambodians, and I&#8217;ve only been able to appeal to 20 or 30 kids at a time. I feel that kids are our future, so if our kids are not interested in Cambodian culture, how are we going to keep carrying it on? It&#8217;s such a huge task,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe motivation is actually fear, the fear of losing the culture. What tends to happen is as generations go on, you lose more and more of that culture and you just become an American that looks Asian, pretty much.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_999941883\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-999941883\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-999941883\" src=\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Hands-1-970x546.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-999941883\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the 4,500 hand gestures in Khmer dancing. Photo by Steven Smith.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Khmer Arts Academy has created a program called Roots and Shoots that allows students to choreograph their own dances using more modern music and the ancient Cambodian dance gestures. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":65710,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3,140],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-instagram","tag-khmer-arts-academy","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}