culture

Endurance and Rediscovery:

The Royal Ballet of

Cambodia

Gilded costumes require extra hours of

preparation. Some even have to be sewn
directly onto the dancer.

Top: photo courtesy of the U.S. National Archives; Bottom: photo courtesy of Jean-Pierre Dalbra

themselves to their knees. In unison

they slide one knee along the floor
toward the back, the leg bent at
ninety degrees and the foot flexed
with toes bent toward the floor,
leaving the other knee in front for
support. Their backs are arched, and
they watch with calm concentration
as their curled fingers paint undulant
brushstrokes in the air before them.
Now they pull the back leg forward
as they twist to the right to paint the
next side of the stage. This is Tehum
Poh, the welcome dance.
Anciently, this type of
performance was reserved for the

The Royal Ballets performances are no longer exlusive to the royalty at Angkor Wat.

48 fall 2015

Princess Buppha Devi, here at age twentytwo, performs a solo at the graduation
ceremony of the School of the Royal Ballet
of Cambodia in Phnom Penh in 1965.

Left: photo by A.J. Oswald; Right: photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbra

The stage is backlit with

a warm yellow glow. The
musicians sit cross-legged in
rows on either side, playing
xylophones, drums, gongs,
and finger cymbals. The
voices of a woman and a
man intertwine as they swoop in and
out of nasal tones and between notes
that are unfamiliar to the Western
ear. From stage left, a line of women
enters the scene in slow motion.
They articulate every movement as
the heel and then the ball of the foot
rises from the ground and floats,
dynamically flexed, to a new position.
Their hands are flexed, the fingers
twisting back toward the wrist in a
beautiful, norm-defying curve.
The dancers slow movements
are entrancing. The women arrive
at center stage and gracefully lower

royal courts of Cambodia, where it

accompanied coronations, marriages,
and funerals. Eventually the dancers
of the Royal Ballet of Cambodia
began to perform internationally,
starting with the 1906 Colonial
Exposition in France. The Ballet
performed in Europe periodically
until political unrest devastated the
country in 1975. In April of that year,
a violent, radical group called the
Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia.
In an effort to transform the country
into a perfectly equal communist
state, the Khmer Rouge abolished
classes, money, religion, traditional
Khmer culture, and even basic human
rights. People associated with the arts
were labeled anti-revolutionary,
and approximately 90 percent of
them were killed. Because classical
Khmer dance had been passed on
orally from artist to artist up to that
point, and because the already scarce
documentation of the art form had
mostly been destroyed during the
genocide, the artists deaths were
devastating to Cambodian culture.
The few dancers who survived
were eager to reconstruct the
traditional repertory. Notable among
them was Her Royal Highness the
Princess Norodom Buppha Devi,
a gifted lifelong student of Khmer
classical dance. As soon as the Khmer
Rouge was ousted in 1979, Princess
Buppha Devi devoted herself to
reestablishing the Royal Ballet. She

reunited with the few dancers who

had survived and has been working
ever since to recreate forgotten
choreography, protect the Ballet
from extinction, and share its work
with the world. In 2008, UNESCO
inscribed the Royal Ballet on its
Representative List of the Intangible
Cultural Heritage of Humanity,
ensuring that the ballet company
will be permanently safeguarded by
various stakeholders.
Thanks to Princess Buppha
Devi, the Ballet has resumed its
international tours, most recently
to Mexico in October 2014 and
various cities in the United States
in November 2014. Its traditional
repertoire is now not only complete
but also expanding. We have now
reached the point where Cambodia

no longer is losing more of its cultural

heritage, Delphine Kassem, an
activist for Cambodian arts, told the
Phnom Penh Post in 1999. Now, we
finally know all the traditional arts
and the crafts that are connected
with every genre. Choreographers
including the Princess herself, who
is now in her seventiesare even
adding new dances to the collection.
The Ballets dances, gilded costumes,
and music are being preserved
digitally and shared around the
world. Because of dedicated dancers
and the rich cultural heritage of
classical Khmer dance, the Ballet has
proven itself to be both resilient and
timeless.

www.norodombupphadevi.com

Lauren McCombs

We have now reached the

point where Cambodia no
longer is losing more of its
cultural heritage.

Classical Khmer dance is careful, hypnotic, and deceptively simple.

www.stowawaymag.com 49