Written by Cheeravath Aphipunyo, VoiceWaves Youth Journalist.

Loung Vy sits in her garden.  Photo by Sophinarath Cheang.

My grandmother Loung Vy is approaching yet another milestone in her life — her seventy-year mark.  She has been living in Long Beach since 1986 and today, just as in her native Battambang, Cambodia, she still plants her own herbs and vegetables.  She remembers raising her five children with my grandfather Chok Man and, on top of that, chickens, water buffalo, cattle, horses, and even an elephant.  This life though, now like a dream for my grandmother, was turned upside down in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took over and sought to create a solely agrarian nation by force.

My grandparents, mother, and young aunts and uncles were forced to work for the radical communists in harsh labor camps.  “It was difficult caring for my children and working hard everyday when they didn’t give us enough to eat, enough to work, enough to live,” Grandma Loung says.  Everyday, they and other forced laborers were fed the same old rice porridge at miniscule amounts.  They worked for hours on end and, as she reveals in her bedroom, “If we didn’t fulfill our duties, they would kill us.”  My grandparents, aunts, and uncles eventually were able to escape into the forest with the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979.

But even then they were not safe.

Grandma Loung remembers running through bullets exchanged between Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese forces.  And in the dark stillness of night, she constantly nursed her baby son — my uncle Khoeun — to avoid being discovered and killed by the Khmer Rouge.  On top of this, landmines were planted all over the place and Grandma Loung and her family traveled in cautious fear to avoid stepping on one.  She got out of bed to show me how she followed the steps of others in front of her as to avoid losing her leg, and, quite possibly, her life.

After escaping into the forest, she and her family were led to a refugee camp near the border of Thailand called New Camp.  It was nearby another known as Old Camp.  “For some reason, soldiers from New Camp and Old Camp fired at each other,” says Grandma Loung as she recalls lying on the floor to avoid the gunfire.  Eventually, she and her family were transferred to Old Camp and then to another camp called Khao-I-Dang.  From there, they were transferred to Kap Choeng and then back to Khao-I-Dang, then to Chon Buri, to Trong Seet, and finally to a refugee camp in the Philippines.  It was difficult to live in the camps.  “There was never enough to eat so I planted what I can to feed my family and myself,” Grandma Loung says, referring to a small plot of land she and the other refugees divided amongst themselves.  She even made some money selling sweets and pastries she made. Grandma Loung used what she earned to buy food, MSG, clothes, and tobacco leaves for her mother.

Plunderers, thieves, and human traffickers were a common thing among the camps and Grandma Loung, always worried and fearful of losing her children, dug a small trench in the dirt where she hid them when the time called for it.  She covered the top with tarp and leaves.  Grandma Loung was able to leave these conditions when she and her family were granted an opportunity to live in the United States in 1986.  They took advantage of it and decided to leave for Long Beach, California where some of my grandfather’s family had already settled.

Upon arrival, Grandma Loung and other Cambodian immigrants were recruited into a sewing-training program for a garment factory.  She learned how to sew and was thereby given a means of supporting herself. Adjusting to life was difficult nonetheless as, with the exception of a few simple words for common vegetables, Grandma Loung didn’t speak English.  But luckily for her, she was among many others who spoke Khmer, the national language of Cambodia. And now, almost thirty years later, Grandma Loung lives just around the corner from a strip of the Anaheim corridor that has become known as Cambodia Town.  Boasting an abundance of Cambodian restaurants, markets, bakeries, and shops that feature Khmer script, it has become a new home for Grandma Loung and the many other refugees who fled the devastation of the Khmer Rouge regime.

But after thirty years of being in Long Beach, little social progress has been made by Cambodian Americans.  Many of whom arrived here were middle-aged and unable to go to school or pursue a career with the demands of parenting.  Furthermore, a large majority of refugees had known little more than rural life in Cambodia; American society and its social structures and systems must have felt like an overwhelming, alien world.

Vy is interviewed by her grandson and Voicewaves Youth Journalist, Cheeravath Aphipunyo.  Photo by Sophinarath Cheang.

Arriving here empty handed was difficult for Grandma Loung.  Having to care for her mother — my great grandmother — as well as her children, she decided to stop working.  She didn’t want to send her elderly mother to a senior-citizen home because she thought of it as an immoral thing to do to family, especially to her mother who cared for her.  In fact, coming empty handed and earning minimum wages, Grandma Loung couldn’t even afford it at all.

Although she misses her homeland and her other family members that remain there, Grandma Loung still enjoys living in Long Beach.  She says living in Long Beach is easier than in Cambodia because the government helps her out with money to buy things like groceries through programs such as Social Security.  She only wishes for a little more help from the government to provide for a substantial amount of food, senior-citizen care, and enough money to buy some clothes.  Money is hard to come by for Grandma Loung so she knits and sews her own clothes and socks.  “Never have I owned pants worth more than $20,” she says while pinching her brown, stretchy pants she had sewn herself.  And when asked about other issues, she mentioned, “I just want people to stop fighting and shooting each other so we all can live in peace.  And many people are struggling and can’t afford housing, cheaper housing would help.”

Despite her struggle, Grandma Loung still finds a way to have some peace of mind.  She continues to grow plants like lemongrass, an essential ingredient for Khmer cuisine, in front of her residence just as she did in the peace of pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodia.  Back in her homeland, she planted many things like rice, bananas, lemongrass, papaya, ginger, and various types of herbs.  Her garden here, much more modest in size and variety, is easy to take care of and she simply waters the few herbs with a hose. This is unlike earlier years when she hauled buckets full of water for her plants.  She used to dig her feet into the mud and water of rice fields but now, she says, “Over here, you don’t get your feet wet.”

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The above article was written by my student, Cheeravath Aphipunyo.  It is but one example of the work that we are doing at VoiceWaves — Long Beach's newest source of news, culture, and dialogue.  Focusing on community health issues in central and west Long Beach, we are working to give visibility to and positively transform two of the poorest communities in the city.  

Check us out:

www.voicewaves.org

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.

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

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.  

Top: Leopold Nunan.  Bottom: Shyamala Moorty and Cynthia Lee.

Monday, October 10, 2011, 8 PM

Show Box LA presents Anatomy Riot # 43
Man Greater Than His Ten Fingers

at

Blankenship Ballet at Alexandria
The Alexandria Hotel
501 S. Spring Street
2nd floor ballroom
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Taking its name after a line in the Rig Veda, Man Greater Than His Ten Fingers is an evening of dance and performance that stresses diversity, community, and collaboration. Asking artists to speak to their respective practices in solos and sometimes pairing them with those so far out of their realm, the performance will feature work that speaks of family, of history, of tradition, of parts of ourselves now dead but lingering, of the sublime, of that which is superhuman. 

Featured artists range in a variety of practices and spaces, exemplifying and stretching what we know as dance and performance, sound and music, sacred and secular, high art and low art. They include Ariel R. Campos, Brian Getnick, Maya Gingery, Kingsley Irons, Cynthia Lee, Shyamala Moorty, Leopold Nunan, Anna B. Scott, and more.

Anatomy Riot #43 is curated by Prumsodun Ok.

$10 cash at the door.

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Anatomy Riot is a project of Show Box LA

www.showboxla.org

Show Box LA is supported by a grant from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission

After months of labor, I am proud to announce that Voicewaves, Long Beach's newest source of news, has gone BETA!  Voicewaves is youth-led and will be reporting on issues of community health.  We will be dealing with everything from how different ethnic communities perceive their undocumented populations to post-traumatic stress disorders amongst Khmer Rouge survivors, access to liquor stores vs. grocery stores in Central and West Long Beach to editorials on what the legalization of gay marriage in New York means for young people in California.

Please give any ideas or feedback if you have any as we prepare to move forward.

www.voicewaves.org

During my studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, I had the privilege of working with George Kuchar, infamous king of lo-fi underground filmmaking.  There was always someone running around naked in class and we, under George's direction, seemed to elevate the smallest, most mundane things into a world that was colorful, vivid, and inclusive.

Not many words right now — in this year alone, I've lost my father, my dance teacher's teacher, and now one of my own filmmaking teachers.  All there is to do is to watch his films, crying and laughing at the same time, because the man gave us, in his work, an unrelenting, brave humor and observation.

George Kuchar died late last night.  He was 69 years old.

George, all of your students, friends, fans, and family send their love.  You will live in our memories and we will feel you when we watch your films.

Sitting below the vastness of the starry night sky in Kings Canyon, I've had the opportunity to tell this story to my filmmaking students each year.  There is a powerful magic in the way the fire lights their faces as they listen.  And when I look up to see the faces of the young girls, I can't help but feel my duty to keep this story alive — in word, in voice, in body. 

Once, a long time ago, there lived a powerful hermit.  He had under his tutelage three very capable and intelligent students and wanted to bestow a most precious gift upon the most deserving of them.  There was Moni Mekhala, goddess of the seas, and the storm demon Ream Eyso; Prince Vorachhun studied magic with the wise man as well.  Seeing their abilities, the hermit could not decide who to give his gift to so he conceived a contest in which the winner would receive the prize.  He told his students sitting in respect below him, whom he loved like his own children, “Whoever should bring me back a glass full of morning dew first will be master of this gift.”

The next morning Ream Eyso and Vorachhun rose with the sun to gather tiny drops of dew from countless leaves of countless trees in the forest; they rushed back to the hermit’s home only to find Moni Mekhala waiting for them there.  Unlike the men, she left her scarf out in the night to soak up the dew and had only to wring out the precious fluid into the glass.  This clever strategy earned her a crystal ball which she now held in her hand, her knowledge causing a powerful, blinding light to emanate it.  The demon and prince were given a diamond axe and magic dagger as consolation prizes, respectively.

Seeing the radiance of Moni Mekhala’s gift, Ream Eyso began to covet the object.  Desire and greed grew stronger in him with each passing moment and day, flowing through his blood and filling his bones.  He began to stalk the goddess through the skies, killing Vorachhun who was her ally, and trying to win the object from her through sweet words and later through violent threats.  Unfazed by all of this, Moni Mekhala calmly dismissed each of the demon’s advances. 

Finally, enraged and out of strategies, Ream Eyso flung his axe at the goddess but he was blinded when she threw the crystal ball into the air, generating lightning.  His axe missed its mark and the sound of it hitting the clouds unleashed thunder.  The conflict and union of their energies – of lightning and thunder, of good and evil, of femininity and masculinity – created the rains that fell to revive Prince Vorachhun, manifestation of the earth, and gave birth to the rain that the Cambodian people, who have lived in an agricultural society for millennia, depend on for survival.

Moni Mekhala looked upon Ream Eyso – her peer, perhaps once her friend, and like her, a newfound keeper of her teacher’s knowledge and tradition – as he struggled in his blinded rage.  In her compassion, the goddess chose to let him live and took his vulnerability as a chance to escape into the clouds.  Soon after, Ream Eyso recovered from this spell and retreated into the clouds to regain himself and stalk the goddess again, the two locked in an eternal struggle.

Moni Mekhala and Ream Eyso performed by the Royal Ballet of Cambodia in 1971.  Menh Kossany is Moni Mekhala; Soth Sam On is Ream Eyso.  Both of these women, trained my dance teacher Sophiline in various capacities.  Soth Sam On has passed away.  I received word on the last day of the TED2011 conference.

Performing Robam Apsara at the James Philip Ribiat-Finley Arts Endowment Fundraiser.

My friend Stephanie, who went to school with me at the San Francisco Art Institute, invited me to perform this past Friday.  Her fiancee passed away two years ago and she is raising funds for the James Philip Ribiat-Finley Arts Endowment.  Named in his honor, it seeks to provide scholarships for Los Angeles teens to pursue study of the arts.  I respect and admire her love for and devotion to her partner.  I wholeheartedly support and celebrate her commitment to make sure the next generation of young people have access to the richness and transformative abilities of art.

I took this opportunity to perform a traditional work, Robam Apsara.  Choreographed in the 1960s during the height of Cambodia's post-independence nationalism, it depicts celestial dancers who emerge from the stone walls of a temple to play in a garden of heaven.  They are led by Mera — their queen and mother of the Khmer race — who wears a white skirt as a symbol of her transcendent purity.

I stripped away the skirt.  I did away with the skin-colored leotard that implies toplessness.

Now, this may seem disrespectful to most and I can already imagine the many tomatoes that people will throw at me.  But I've been grappling with a lot of ideas surrounding my practice and this post, really, is something like "coming out" as a performer.  I've been told many times by my loving teacher, "I'm not ready for that," in regards to certain artistic decisions.  And lately, I am experiencing an increasingly larger feeling of distance — I haven't felt my teacher's hands mold my body for nearly a year and Cambodia seems evermore a faraway place and time.  Perhaps though, the furthest away I feel is when I am in the studio watching my teacher teach other dancers, sometimes teaching alongside her, realizing that I — even though one of her most devoted and accomplished students — could never perform on her stage the way my female peers could.

When will people be ready?  And how long will I put my own experience and growth on hold to be in line with others?

For the sake of time, I will list my decisions to perform like this in bullet form.

1)  Performance to me, even of secular work, is a ritual gesture.  In ritual, we make offerings.  There is something to be said of offering things that are singular and assymetrical in their arrangement — the things you can't get anywhere else.  I am offering myself to the world, to the traditon, to the gods in a way that only I can.  In this sense, the growth of these things only becomes more fuller, vivid, and beautiful.

2)  I am chasing a tradition and social norm older than that of the status quo.  In ancient days, according to Chinese sources, Cambodian men and women bathed naked in public with no sense of shame at all.  And further more, temple carvings depict bare-breasted male and female gods; they are transcendent and serene, their presence so unlike the shamed and "modest" bodies of today.

3) This is an example of using my limitations to find new possibilities.  In the past, this has come to mean that I use sound artists as opposed to a bad recording or pin peat musicians who do not play well.  I don't have anyone to costume me so I will strip that away as well.  I don't have any other dancers in the area who can perform on the same caliber so I will perform solo or use dancers who are mature in different forms (and therefore, draw upon new languages and images and histories etc).

4)  Although light in tone, this dance is the cultural jewel of Cambodia.  It is probably the most popular Cambodian classical dance and has a strong nationalism associated with it.  My decision to perform this, to embody the history and choreography and image with my male body, will upset many as it stresses personal ownership of the art form by the artist and not by the nation.  

5)  There is something to be said about the performance of the surface and the performance of khlem, essence.  In contemporary Cambodia, the dance form is becoming increasingly surface.  Am I pretty?  Am I pretty?  Is this a spectacle that the audience will enjoy?  And their movements suffer from this driving force.  I want to push it beyond that to keep this art form alive — it already almost died once, in the tragedies of the Khmer Rouge regime where roughly 90 percent of artists died.  Am I bending light?  Am I stillness punctauted by movement?  Am I touching the divine?  Am I tapping a universal, human place?  How will the world transform into a better place from this performance?  These are the questions that I will ask my students, the questions I will use to mold their bodies and characters for generations to come.

In closing, maybe the smallest gesture is the biggest revolution.  And sometimes, perhaps, the revolution is really not one at all.  The day after this, I saw a friend at a bomba show by Las Bomberas de la Bahia, an all-female bomba troupe from the San Francisco Bay Area.  The last time he saw me was at the Getty Center, where I did a lecture demonstration geared for kids and their families.  He said to me, "You did a really good job.  All of the parents around me were like, 'He can teach my kids any day.'"  

Well, I put myself on hold no more.  If they want me, they'll have to take it all.

Robam Apsara through the years:

Princess Buppha Devi performs Robam Apsara in the 1960s.

The Royal Ballet of Cambodia performs in Washington D.C. in 1971.  This tour was essentially an ambassadorial mission, to appeal for help from the American government in light of the ensuing civil chaos in Cambodia.  Mera is played by Vorn Savay, who now teaches my friends in France.

Dancers from the School of Fine Arts (once the Royal University of Fine Arts) perform Robam Apsara.  Its lyrics have been given a socialist agenda, taken after the newly formed government and its watchful Vietnamese neighbor.  My dance teacher, Sophiline, is in the front-right on the viewer's right.  Mera is played by Yim Devi, who now teaches on the East Coast.  Note the militance of the drums in the beginning and the red skirts, symbolic of socialism.

Robam Apsara performed by dancers of the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh.  Mera is played by Ouk Solichumnith; she is a good example of a more technically and emotionally mature queen-mother.  I learned the dance from watching this video over and over as a seventeen year old boy.

The Royal Ballet of Cambodia repurposes Robam Aspara for Preah Thaong Neang Neak.  Sin Sakada, the soloist emerging in darkness, is the current apsara star.  Does anyone else see a real serious drop in technique and performativity from the above video?

My father Sem Ok passed away on January 20, 2011.  It was my twenty-fourth birthday.

Since then, life has been a rough road to emotional and spiritual stability.  My students have been a crucial part of my healing process and — with their love — I can feel my body ready to dance again, my mind ready to make again, my voice ready to sing again.  It's my privilege and honor that a group of them have taken their time to share my story in this short film, Six Months After.  Set to a letter written to my late father, it is a meditation on life after death and a portrait of my beautiful kids at the YMCA Youth Institute. 

I'm so very proud of them.  I love them so.

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.

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?

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.