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Synopsis

Cast

• dance ensemble: Ensemble of the Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh | bio

  Established in 1965 by King Norodom Sihanouk, the Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh, is Cambodia’s official conservatory of fine arts. It carries on a tradition of master/apprentice training that dates back more than a thousand years. The school’s faculty, which comprises its performance ensembles, includes the country’s best actors, dancers and musicians. Its classical dance ensemble has toured extensively throughout Asia, Australia, Europe and North America, including tours of the USA in 1971, 1990, 2001, 2003 and 2005.

Crew

• Director: John Bishop | bio

  John Bishop has directed and produced more than twenty films and videos, many of them focusing on dance and music. His works have won numerous awards and have been screened at festivals throughout the world as well as on PBS’s American Patchwork series. Some of his other projects include Oh, What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me! Edmund Carpenter (2002), Cambodian Court Dance: the Next Generation (2001), Ohana: We Are a Family (1998), Hosay Trinidad (1998) and Himilayan Herders (1997). He is currently on the faculty at UCLA where he teaches video for dance, ethnographic filmmaking, as well as other arts and media related courses. In 2006 he was awarded a lifetime achievement award from the Society for Visual Anthropology.

• Producer: John Shapiro | bio

  John Shapiro is the Executive Director of the Khmer Arts Academy.

• Choreographer: Sophiline Cheam Shapiro | bio

  Sophiline Cheam Shapiro is a choreographer, dancer, vocalist and educator whose original works have infused the venerable Cambodian classical form with new ideas and energy. Her choreography includes Samritechak (2000), The Glass Box (2002) and Seasons of Migration (2005), which she has set on Cambodia’s finest performing artists and toured to three continents. Notable venues include Cal Performances, the Hong Kong Arts Festival, New York’s Joyce Theater and the Venice Biennale. Pamina Devi had its world premiere at Vienna’s New Crowned Hope Festival (2006) and tours the USA and Europe during the 2007-08 season. Her next project, a collaboration with composer Chinary Ung for the Los Angeles Master Chorale, will premiere at Walt Disney Concert Hall in November 2008. Among her essays is "Songs My Enemies Taught Me," published in Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs by Survivors, compiled by Dith Pran, edited by Kim DePaul (1997, Yale University Press). Cheam Shapiro has received numerous honors, including Asia 21, Creative Capital, Durfee, Guggenheim and Irvine Dance Fellowships, as well as the 2006 Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture.

  Cheam Shapiro was a member of the first generation to graduate from the Royal University of Fine Arts after the fall of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime and was a member of the faculty there from 1988 to 1991. She studied all three major roles for women (neang, nearong and yeak), which is rare. With RUFA’s ensemble, she toured India, the Soviet Union, the USA and Vietnam. She immigrated to Southern California in 1991. Shapiro studied dance ethnology at UCLA on undergraduate and graduate levels and now teaches and lectures internationally. She is co-founder and Artistic Director of the Khmer Arts Academy based in Long Beach, CA and Takhmao, Cambodia.