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Bodhisattva Calling: Thoughts on War and Wisdom

What Is Your Buddha?

One year ago, I walked into a tiny store in downtown LA’s Little Tokyo district.  After browsing through a variety of knick-knacks, I came across an image and stood frozen at its sight.  I didn’t know what to do.

Do I raise my hands and press them together in prayer?  Do I cast my gaze down in respect?  My being overcome, I silently contemplated the image, observing the lines that formed an unfamiliar divine being.  Whoever he was, the man’s got what Cambodians call rith.  And this image, there is a power in it.

I must have stood there for fifteen minutes before I finally asked how much the image cost.  It was rather expensive so, after maybe five more minutes of admiring it, I left the store.

Monjubosatsu
Monju Bosatsu, after a year, is finally at home with me where he belongs.

Well, this past Saturday, after the first rehearsal of my newest work Of Land and Sky, my choreography mentor Oguri and I decided to talk over beers in Little Tokyo.  Before this though, I led him into the store and walked straight to the image.  It was still there after all this time.

“What do you think?” I ask.  Oguri tells me that the image is definitely special.  He says there is something especially striking about the face.  We ask a woman nearby how much the image costs and she tells us to ask her sister who had drawn it.

I call the author over and ask for her assistance.  I point to the image that I want (there are more images of other divinities).   She tells me the price but immediately adds, “What is your Buddha?”  Confused, I tell her I don’t know.  And quite frankly, I ask myself how someone is supposed to have a Buddha in the first place.

“What is your Buddha?” she asks again.

“Um, I don’t know.  How am I supposed to know that?”

“What year are you born?”

“1987.”

“1987. . . 1987,” she says, as she makes her way to a tiny calendar on the opposite end of the store.  “Ah, you are Year of the Rabbit!” 

Well, I could have told her that.

“Let’s see. . . Your Buddha is. . . Monju Bosatsu,” she says as she makes her way back.  “Which one did you want?  This one?  This one?”  I shake my head as she points to the wrong images.  I point to the one that I want and she pulls it up. 

“Waa, you’re Year of the Rabbit?  This is Monju Bosatsu!  See, Monju Bosatsu!  It must be meant for you,” she says with excitement as she points to the Japanese calligraphy in a corner of the image.  I smiled with joy, surprised at the coincidence.

The Gods and Me

Altar
My altar at home.  In Cambodian dance ritual, we pray as the crowns are put on us.  They are believed to harbor spirits of the dance.  And wearing them signifies our transformation from human to divine.  The mask in the middle is of Lok Ta Maha Eisey, the ultimate teacher spirit in Cambodian arts.

I grew up with the gods, essentially.  At a time when my friends were reading about Clifford the Big Red Dog, I was spinning globes, reading about ancient civilizations and their spiritual beliefs.  I remember drawing Quetzalcoatl, that majestic Feathered Serpent of the Aztecs.  I remember spreading my arms to fly like Ra, that magical Sun God of ancient Egypt.  Strangely though, the images that I have connected to most — and those projected upon me — have been remarkably similar.

Real quickly, here they go:

Greek mythology made its way into my life first.  And, since that time, maybe first grade, Athena — Goddess of War and Wisdom, protector of Oddyseus — was my lady of choice.

During the height of AOL Instant Messenger, a friend’s boyfriend initiated a conversation with me.  He was a monk turned soldier who was living in San Diego.  He tells me that he could feel my presence through the computer screen.  I tell myself that this guy must be crazy.  He says that I am the reincarnation of a divine warrior named Sina.  I ask him how an ugly, pockmarked teenager like me could be divine-anything.  I tell him that I am too small and scrawny to be a warrior.  He responds by saying that I am here to complete my task — I will leave the world when it is done.  He tells me I will die young.  I sit before my computer screen, scared and unsure.

In Cambodian classical dance, the gods are many.  Lately though, I’ve begun to meditate upon Moni Mekhala, goddess of the seas.  Outsmarting her male peers, she receives a crystal ball from her revered teacher.  Her knowledge and wisdom — passed unto her from him — emanates the ball, causing it to radiate a powerful, blinding light.  Jealousy consumes another student and with her newfound weapon, Moni Mekhala brings her violent peer to his defeat.

And now, after a little research, here is the newest being in my life.

Monju Bosatsu is the Japanese incarnation of Manjusri, most senior of the bodhisattva.  He is considered to be the wisest of these beings who, although having already attained enlightenment, choose to stay behind to help people find a divine, ageless truth.  Monju Bosatsu is the father and mother — hey!!! — of all the bodhisattva.  He sits upon a lion, representing his transcendence over the wild ferocity of the human mind.  He holds a sword that cuts through darkness and ignorance.  He holds a lotus that holds a book, making him protector of Buddhist doctrine and signifying his trait as most knowledged.  And, in an early Japanese tradition, Monju Bosatsu “invented” nanshouku — man-on-man sex.

I love it.

The Duty of Wisdom

Now that I’m living in my hometown again — teaching, curating, scheming things like outdoor film festivals and art centers — the image of the bodhisattva has special resonance.  And looking at Monju Bosatsu, and his similarities to other celestial beings of my favor, I can’t help but ask some questions.

What is the root of this cross-cultural relationship between war and wisdom?  And what does that image of divine warrior — one the aforementioned examples embody — actually mean? 

Now, I’m no scholar.  And by no means am I one to advocate for violence in the name of religion.  So let’s go a different route.  Imagine that we live a thousand years before, in a world where virtually everyone is illiterate and the image has a profound place as a teaching tool.  What does the image of Monju Bosatsu say?  What precious idea are we to juice out of it?

First off: fight.  Fight ignorance and darkness, fight injustice and deceit, fight inaction and fear, fight the left, fight the right, fight the center.  Fight for love, fight for truth, fight for beauty, fight for health.  Knowledge and wisdom is your sword.  Use this powerful weapon of yours.  Take care of it.  Hone it.  It is your responsibility to use it. 

Secondly: fight gracefully.  My favorite thing about this image and the other divine warriors is that they are so refined.  Monju Bosatsu hardly portrays a sense of violence or urgency despite carrying a sword.  He looks as if he would calmly slice at what is wrong with the world.  He looks as if he may easily kick out one leg to defeat an attacker.  He wields his weapon — sharp, piercing, puncturing — with a sense of collected compassion.  What would it look like to fight gracefully in our modern day?  Or perhaps, what does it look like when you offer your truthful love by fighting?  Names like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. come to my mind.

I will close with not what this image tells me but what it asks.  For it, I have no answer.  In a stagnant, violently oppressive society, when is it okay to literally wield that sword and fight?  And, in that violence to end a greater violence, is it possible to do it with grace?

Graceful resistance.  Moni Mekhala brings down the feared storm demon, Ream Eyso.  Watch how she calmly watches him as he gestures aggresively.  The two are locked in an eternal struggle of male and female, good and evil, thunder and lightning.  

 

 

 

 

 

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Call To The Teachers

I’ve never met Chea Samy but I’ve heard much about her.  She was once the leading performer of her day, known for portraying the demanding role of Moni Mekhala in Cambodian dance ritual.  She was a rumored consort of King Monivong and strangely, the sister-in-law of the communist radical known as Pol Pot.  And after the tragic destruction her brother brought upon humanity, she worked to rebuild and revive the spirit of a people and nation that was left in ruins.

She and her fellows ensured the survival and transmission of Cambodian classical dance.  They did this in an environment of shambles, of little resources, and knowing that only ten to twenty percent of their colleagues were able to escape the ashes of genocide.  Their most valuable resources — the knowledge of the eldest teachers — were at risk of being lost with the fast, inevitable decay and death of the old women’s bodies.

But their spirits remain alive.

In Cambodian dance ritual, there is a ceremony known as sompeah kru.  Literally meaning “prayer to the teachers”, it is a moment in which students make offerings of fruits and flowers, candles and incense, dance and music to their teachers, to the spirits of teachers now passed, and to the gods.  They seek the blessings of the spiritual world through their living teachers, connecting themselves to an artistic and philosophical and spiritual lineage more than a thousand years old.  They call to the spirits of those who came before them to witness the performance, to witness the continuation of their ideas and beliefs, and to witness truth and beauty.  And the spirits — ever-present caretakers of the art — sometimes use the dancers’ bodies as vehicles to live again, teach again, and offer advice.

In this act of possession, history is rendered alive.  It is something breathing and moving in present space.  It is an active agent capable of shaping the future.

I wanted to take this moment to do something of a digital sompeah kru, to remember the hard work and valuable contributions of those who came before me as I continue my development of Of Land And Sky.  As a young practitioner in the diaspora who works experimentally, I’ve had little contact with my teachers’ teachers but my love and respect for them is solid and unflinching.

Thank you Chheng Phon.  Thank you Soth Sam On.  Thank you Chea Samy.  The seeds of your tradition and knowledge have been planted all across the world, it will give life to both familiar as well as new, equally potent and differently beautiful artistic flowers.

It is with great excitement and honor that I share the rare video footage that inspired this post.  Thankfully with the wonders of technology, the spirits now have other forms in which to live once more.  We are transported back to 1994, nearly twenty years after the Khmer Rouge regime, where Chea Samy carries herself with a dignity and grace that defies the harsh tragedy and devastation of war.  The glimmer in her eyes as she watches her students practice, the gentle way she sculpts gender and writes history into their bodies — all this set to the vocal melody is nothing short of invigorating inspiration.  And how wonderful it is to watch the old matron, to see such a strong, resilient type of beauty!

Chea Samy died later that year.

Chea Samy first appears at 2:34.  The student that she teaches, Ouk Solichumnith, grew to be a beautiful dancer that was featured performing Robam Apsara in my last post.  Like her teacher, she became the leading performer of Moni Mekhala.

 

Filed under  //   Cambodian Classical Dance   Chea Samy   Chheng Phon   Of Land And Sky   Prumsodun Ok and NATYARASA   Soth Sam On  
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Choreographing The Ideal Woman

As I continue to develop my latest work Of Land And Sky, there is an image from the closing scene of Tep Sodachan that keeps coming to mind.  Stuck in the open, overwhelming sky, Tep Sodachan weeps for her distant husband amongst her fellow sisters.  They gently place their hands upon her as if to catch her should she fall, all the while preventing her from flying down to the man and life she desires.  This simultaneous gesture of support and imprisonment is something that I must really consider as a male choreographer setting images of woman on women and as a male performer assuming these very same roles.

Perhaps I’ll start this study of the feminine in 2007 when I first got a glimpse into the world of samba.  It is San Francisco Carnaval and, attracted by the large gathering of drummers on stage, my dear friend Daria and I make our way through the crowd to be in front.  The drummers are introduced as Grupo Samba Rio, led by the powerful Jorge Alabé who initiates an infectious and thunderous roar of drums that gets everyone dancing and screaming with joy. 

After some time twisting and turning, snaking and shaking in the very little room available, I stopped when the stage was transformed with the appearance of dancers.  Dressed in next to nothing with feathers, the seven beautiful, glitter-bodied women swung their hips from side to side like some rare and strange breed of birds from paradise.  I stood frozen at their sight, contemplating the ritual magic in the vibration of their feathers and feeling like I had known this all before.

Coincidentally, someone recorded this moment while standing right behind Daria and I.  Maisa Duke — who later became my samba teacher — and her Energia do Samba perform alongside Grupo Samba Rio.  Notice how Daria, immediately in front of the camera, claps and dances on in support of her fellow women.  I, standing to her left, stop and press my hands together in intense study.

This dancer has a softness in her movement.  That dancer has an explosive radiance.  She’s faking her smile.  The girl right next to her looks very nervous.  Thoughts raced through my head as I observed each detail of the performance, comparing my own experience as a dancer with that of those on stage.  And after some time, I surprised myself when I barely audibly said to myself, “These are the Brazilian apsara.”

And in many ways they are.

Dancers from the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh perform Robam Apsara.  Choreographed in the 1960s, the dancers play celestial women who are the epitome of female grace and beauty in Cambodian culture.  Ouk Solichumnith, dressed in white, plays Mera who is queen of the apsara and mother of the Khmer race.

Now, this statement would probably anger “conservative” Cambodians.  How dare I compare the apsara — celestial dancers in the court of Indra who, today, are no less than a symbol of feminine grace as they are of the Cambodian heritage and nation — with women wearing almost nothing?  Any Khmer woman who dares reveal that much in public would be derided as a social deviant worthy of no respect.

But let me mention that the skin-colored leotards covering the dancers’ torsos are supposed to give the impression of being bare-breasted — just as the apsara at Angkor are depicted.  And in fact, when the Chinese diplomat Chou Ta Kaun visited the Angkorian court in the thirteenth century, he noted women walking around topless and bathing naked in public with no mention of shame at all.

This shift in Cambodian perceptions of the female body can probably be, among other things, associated with a shift in religious belief.  When the apsara were carved into the walls of Angkor Wat, Hinduism was the official religion of the royal court.  But today, Cambodia is a predominantly Buddhist country.  Women are now asked to cover their bodies in the presence of monks.  And in Theraveda Buddhism, the “small-wheel” school of Buddhism Cambodians prescribe to, women must first be reborn as men before they can attain enlightenment.  This patriarchal institution of a patriarchal society treats women radically different from its predecessor: a place where women held positions of power, a place where women were active in commerce — a place where the dancing female (and male) body was a form of spiritual capital, an agent between heaven and earth, and an active vehicle of prayer that ensured the fertility, life, and well-being of the people and land.

The sambista and apsara are also similar in that they are exports, are ambassadors of a nation’s ideal of female beauty.  And it is very interesting to note that they are choreographed very similarly.  The leading performer — indicated by a few extra costume embellishments — is surrounded by an even number of performers executing the same movement.  She is the center of gravity and when performing synchronous gestures with her counterparts, she and her fellows create a dance of balance, order, and harmony.  In this unison, in the lines they trace and form, they dance a sacred geometry and geography, dance beauty, dance strength, and dance the social possibilities and limitations of womanhood.  The stage becomes a condensation of multiple images of one ideal woman.  It is an explosive expression of her as well.

Let’s take a look at an example closer to home for most people.

Beyonce’s Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)

The music video for Beyoncé’s Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It), features the same type of choreography as those seen above.  Notice how her back-up dancers — they may as well be the same person — for the most part execute symmetrical movements that frame and focus Beyoncé.  They have a quality of being less-than-but-the-same as the diva who is separated from the pack by an armlet and one-sleeve leotard.  (The shoulder-revealing one-sleeve is especially interesting to me as it occurs in contemporary Cambodian classical dance costumes for female characters, unlike Thai or Lao classical dance which employ similar but different costumes.)

At the risk of even more criticism, let me ask: is this video, at nearly 124 million views, another expression of an ages-old, archetypal woman?  Some type of universal expression of a sexually-potent, youthful queen?  And why is that one of the top comments for this video questions how “mesmerizing” three woman simply dancing the same movements can be?  Has this video received so much acclaim because it has successfully employed a formula for depicting what it means to be a woman? Or is this choreography merely an example of the human desire for and appreciation of pattern and order?  One thing for sure, if Beyoncé were to perform this on her own, it would have been radically different and less effective. 

I’m probably angering more Cambodians by associating the divine, transcendent apsara, as well as the symbols of nation and race their human counterparts are, with the mundane, saturated landscape of angst that is American pop culture.  But let’s look closer.

It can definitely be questioned if Beyoncé’s dance and song of liberation and power is even one at all.  She asserts and emphasizes her worth only by mouthing lyrics that reveal her ability to attract other men and by displaying her not-so-subtle sexuality.  What about things such as intelligence and independence, kindness and compassion?  And her dancers, although executing some fierce movements, have rather muted presences that ultimately feels dehumanized.  Is this dance women, or a type of woman, subject to a male gaze?  Or is Beyoncé some type of lipstick feminist who with the swing of a hip, with the flip of a wrist, is an authoritative object capable of shifting the internal universe created by the lights, camera, and editing in which the performance exists?

Like Beyoncé and her dancers, the human counterparts to the divine apsara are subject to a gaze as well.  In Robam Apsara, Mera — Queen of the apsara herself — emerges from the walls of an Angkorian temple to say, “Today I am happy to see the flowers growing in this garden.  I’ll make a bouquet of many flowers and place it next to me on my bed.  If you’d like, I’d love to give you this flower.”  It is important to note that in the lyrics, she refers to herself as p’oun as a wife would intimately to her husband, a younger sibling to an elder one, instead of using the gender- and status-neutral khniom.  Perhaps then, Mera dances not only for her husband and the male gaze but for the watchful eyes of older sisters and a lineage of women before her as well.  After all, women are just as much the strict enforcers of gender and social norms. 

Later in the dance, when the other performers appear, the lyrics take a third-person perspective that eventually states in the very last line that the apsara are “capable of pulling upon the emotions of men until they are addicted.”  Beauty and attractiveness is most certainly power in the world of the apsara and notice how Ouk Solichumnith looks directly into the camera — at her audience — at 9:32 as that phrase is completed.  On top of this, let me mention that in a Cambodian context, to my knowledge anyway, Mera is the only apsara given a name.  Perhaps it has to do with the fact that she is the only one of the spiritually virgin, pure, and transcendent maidens that someone has “put a ring on it.”  Her counterparts remain to us only as vibrant but cookie-cutter motifs dancing in line.  They are not to be mistaken with the devata, female guardian spirits who, although numbering near 1,700, are each rendered uniquely.

Are the sambista, the human apsara, Beyoncé and her dancers just different cultural renderings of the same woman?  And in this celebration of her, what is the line between the pedestal and the prison?

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Technically, only dancing female figures are considered apsara (top).  Joyful and serene, they are small cookie-cutter decorative motifs adorning the temples of Angkor.  The devata, more well-known and mistaken as apsara, are each rendered with different jewelry, hair styles, faces, and postures (bottom).  The devata are individualism and idiosyncracy in an otherwise highly symmetrical, centrally-balanced temple structure.

I’ve struggled much with this very question.  I cannot tell you how many times through out my training where I have stood on the sidelines of the studio or the stage — my heart quietly breaking, invisible tears falling — as I watched my beloved teacher mold the bodies of young women into ideal men and women for an upcoming performance.  Most certainly, I can rehearse these roles, teach them even, but to go on stage in full female regalia to perform a traditional work would never happen no matter how much I demonstrate stronger technique and maturity as a performer.  It would never happen no matter how “radiant” or “spiritual” or “special” my teacher says I am as a dancer for I am not the ideal.

I am a gay male artist carrying on a way of moving and being for which women are the custodians and stakeholders.  I am a practitioner in a distant diaspora.  My face and body is scarred.  I do not think that all women have to look and act like apsara to be beautiful and worthy (although I appreciate the beauty of the image).  Have you ever witnessed the power of a dancer, white-haired and fingers shaking uncontrollably, practicing in the aging decay of her body?  Have you seen the gentle but solid grounding and connection to the earth that a bigger dancer has?  Somehow, my very presence as a dancer, as a teacher, as a choreographer, and as a thinker in this art form is nothing short of being a revolutionary frankentstein monster.  And somehow, still, I find myself to be so spiritually and politically attune with the art form as well. 

In the context of Cambodian performance, the embodying of the other gender is no new thing.  For example, Cambodian classical dance features women playing as women, men, and demons with men playing the acrobatic monkey roles; lakhaon khaol, a masked-dance drama performed entirely by men, enacts scenes from the Reamker, the Khmer version of the Ramayana.  Both of these art forms are of ritual import and in the case of Cambodian classical dance, some of the most sacred works depict none other than the harmonious courtship of male and female divinities (all played by women).  The dance then becomes not about the sexual union of male and female but an energetic one — of masculinity and femininity — manifested most by the ardhanari, the half-woman.  This image and being appears during Cambodian dance ritual in Robam Buong Suong Yokorn in which a Brahmin, half-man and half-woman (played by a woman as it is Cambodian classical dance), appears on stage to act as a messenger between heaven and earth, between the people and the gods.

So what does it mean for the male body to serve as a vehicle for the image of woman and perform her ritual choreography that seems to cross borders of race, place, and time?

The Banjee Boyz perform a choreography by AB Soto at Mustache Mondays in downtown Los Angeles.  Mustache Mondays is probably the best dance party in town.

For myself, a gay man in America, living in a structurally oppressive and violent society founded upon the gray limitations of puritanism, it is celebration.  It is defiance.  It is resistance.

Clenched fists swinging in the air, hips and booties thrusting aggressively, the Banjee Boyz display a militance in their spicy sass.  Their wrists fling like those of a flamboyant woman.  They mime gestures of anal and oral sex.  In the same balanced, highly-centered type of choreography, they manage to subvert social codes of gender while displaying those very same things.  They are, all at once, not man and not woman while being both of those things at the same time.  And their community of men and women cheer loudly in support.  (A dear friend prefers to see this video as “diversifying the spectrum of masculinity” as opposed to my approach in seeing it as the embodiment and questioning of femininity through gesture.) 

So how do we fully celebrate womanhood?  And how do we represent women in art without flattening a broad and diverse experience?  And is it possible to fully embody and protest at the same time?  It seems that I have more questions than answers so I’ll just end it here, with this image.

Ready to perform Robam Apsara as part of a demonstration at UCLA.

 

Filed under  //   AB Soto   Apsara   Banjee Boyz   BeyoncĂ©   Cambodian Classical Dance   Energia do Samba   Grupo Samba Rio   Maisa Duke   Mustache Mondays   Of Land And Sky   Prumsodun Ok and NATYARASA   San Francisco Carnaval   Single Ladies  
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Of Land And Sky: A Call for Performers

My childhood is hard to separate from a television.  I remember watching Fellini’s Satyricon as a six year-old boy and shows like The Simpsons were a family staple.  I remember Chinese action films and Thai soap operas, Bollywood musicals, and even more rare, Cambodian karaoke and cinema.  Often outdated, low-budget productions salvaged from a devastating war, the Cambodian films in my early days were naturally less captivating.  Yet, in my maturation as an artist and person, I cannot help but return to those same images and narratives hovering around me at that time, tasting and feeling the new meaning and resonance they now have.

I’m currently in the beginning stages of developing my next work, Of Land And Sky.  Initially inspired by the closing scene of the Khmer classic, Tep Sodachan, the work recasts the seemingly impossible love between a princess of heaven and her peasant, human husband into the bodies of gay men. 

Akara Lohet (Letters in Blood) is the song that concludes Tep Sodachan (1968), featuring vocals by Ros Serey Sothea and Sin Sisamuth.  Tep Sodachan is performed by Vichara Dany and her husband is performed by Kong Sam Oeun.  A translation of this song can be downloaded at the end of this post.

With Of Land And Sky, I am interested in questioning the wide gaps and distances society can create for lovers in their intimate embrace.  What is this person’s educational background?  How much money does he make?  What are his spiritual beliefs?  As pragmatism starts to pierce through my youthful idealism, I now understand the reasons my parents so often posed these questions to my elder siblings.  And watching Tep Sodachan being dragged from her child and home by her father the King of Heaven, contemplating the vastness of the space between land and sky (and the even greater desire to reach out and reconnect through it) — the many structures and systems designed to keep people from sharing life become ever so visible and heartbreaking.

My family tells me I should marry a good person from a good family.

My friends tell me I should sacrifice happiness for comfort.

My society tells me that I am incapable of having a healthy, fruitful and lasting monogamous relationship with the type of people who make my heart race.

Thoughts like these have been passed on from parent to child, friend to friend, government to citizen for thousands of years of course but let’s not fail to mention that movement in the politics of love has been made.  For example, in the United States today, it would only be the few and far between who would question the natural rightness of an interracial marriage.  Yet the fact that it was only legalized a couple of decades ago hardly seems like progress when you consider nations like Cambodia whose mytho-historical origins are so much based upon the union of two different worlds and races.

What did love look like at a time without borders of race and nation?  What is love transcendent of walls of class, religion, and social norm?  Does love itself change when it manifests in different bodies, different places, and different times?

Of Land And Sky will answer that last question with a resounding no.  By invoking and embodying this narrative and history through the images and melodies of Cambodian pop culture, through a myth passed from one generation to another, I armor myself with the knowledge of the past as I work to create a healthier, more equitable society and future.  My body becomes a canvas for a social and spiritual, physical and psychological violence committed for centuries through out the world.  It becomes witness to the desire and devotion of two ill-fated lovers.  It becomes a testament to the love experienced by gay men all over the world today that is no less potent, no less true, no less virtuous, and no less susceptible to social pressure than those around them.

As of now, I’m seeking performers in the Los Angeles area who can help me bring this vision to life.  It will be performed in whole or in part at CHIME LIVE!, the closing showcase for the Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange program which pairs young, emerging choreographers with their more established and experienced peers (I am working with the masterful Oguri).  As the images and gestures run through my head, I imagine Of Land And Sky to be an, at times, humorous and absurd, tense and heart-wrenching meditation of dance, performance, video, and theater.

What is the effect created when juxtaposing two distant lovers connected by lines of sight with two lovers who although in close proximity — eye to eye, lip to lip — are so impossibly apart from one another?

What if we were to artfully illustrate the sexual union missing in the video on stage as a gesture of celebration, protest, and resilience?

What would it look like to minimalize the hyper-stylized form of Cambodian classical dance into an image-based and presence-driven movement vocabulary that speaks to the gestures of the actors in the film?

Does retelling this story ultimately recycle and re-propagate this sadness and violence?  Or does it serve as a shell with which to contemplate our disorder, act as a containment of our mistakes — becomes a form outside of ourselves that we can observe, understand, and conquer?

So, if you’d like to help me give Tep Sodachan’s story contemporary relevance — shake up an unhealthy social order to push for a higher harmony — do share any ideas, feedback, impressions, or questions that you may have.  And if you’re in the Los Angeles area and would like to perform, please contact me.  No Cambodian classical dance experience is necessary.


 

Click here to download:
Akara_Lohet_(Translation).pdf (26 KB)
(download)

 

Filed under  //   Akara Lohet   Cambodian Cinema   Cambodian Classical Dance   Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange   Of Land And Sky   Prumsodun Ok and NATYARASA   Ros Serey Sothea   Sin Sisamuth   TED Fellow  
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