The Royal Ballet of Cambodia

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 one woman
and one man intertwine as they swoop in and out of nasal tones and between notes that are

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unfamiliar to the Western ear. From stage left, a line of women enters the scene in slow motion.

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They articulate every movement as first the heel, then the ball of the foot, rises from the ground

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and floats, dynamically flexed, to a new position. Their hands are flexed, the fingers curling back

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toward the wrist in a beautiful, norm-defying curve.

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The dancers slow movements are entrancing. The women arrive at center stage and
gracefully lower 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 curling 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 undulous 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

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Tehum Poh, the welcome dance.

Anciently, this type of performance was reserved for the royal courts of Cambodia,
where it accompanied royal 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

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communist state, the Khmer Rouge abolished classes, money, religion, traditional Khmer
culture, and even basic human rights. People associated with the arts were labeled antirevolutionary, and approximately 90 percent of them were killed. Because classical Khmer
dance was passed on orally from artist to artist up to that point, and because the already-scarce

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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, to protect the Ballet from extinction, and to share its work with the world. In 2008,
UNESCO inscribed the Royal Ballet on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage

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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 (October 2014) and to various cities in the United States (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 seventies are even adding new dances to the
collection. The Ballets dances, gilded costumes, and music are being preserved digitally and
are being 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.

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