THE BOOK
Ream Eyso and Moni Mekhala retells the sacred drama of the same name, a tale in which rivaling students of a powerful hermit bring life to lightning, thunder, and rain. Weaving together interviews, essays, photographs, and illustrations, the book uses the story to explore the evolution of the Khmer classical dance tradition, the passage of leadership within artistic lineages, and the circumstances of today's women. Contributors include award-winning choreographer Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, dance scholar Toni Shapiro-Phim, and visual artist Brian Mendez.
KHMER CLASSICAL DANCE
Developed over a thousand years ago as a prayer in movement for the deliverance of rain, fertility, and well-being, Khmer classical dance is a potent symbol of Cambodia's history and identity. The art form suffered a great loss from 1975 - 1979 when communist radicals known as the Khmer Rouge took power and sought to create an egalitarian peasant society. They brought about the deaths of nearly a third of Cambodia's entire population—included in that number were an estimated 90% of Khmer classical dance artists. Following this tragic loss, dancers worked in the shadow of genocide and trauma to revive their art and the spirit of their people. Today, nearly 40 years later, Cambodia's classical dancers still work in an environment of uncertainty as they breathe new life into their venerable heritage.
20 GOOD PEOPLE
I am looking for 20 good people to help me share the story of Ream Eyso and Moni Mekhala with the world. Your support will allow me to print 50 exclusive print copies of the book, which will be given to a hand-picked group of people and institutions that I have identified to be caretakers of Khmer dance. Your contributions will also allow me to publish Ream Eyso and Moni Mekhala as an e-book, ensuring that the rich knowledge it contains remains accessible to all. Proceeds from the e-book will be donated to Khmer Arts, a transnational organization at the forefront of Khmer classical dance practice.
THE TEAM
SOPHILINE CHEAM SHAPIRO is an internationally known choreographer, dancer and educator whose groundbreaking creative works, which have been performed on major stages across four continents, have infused the venerable Cambodian classical dance form with new energy and ideas. She is the recipient of many honors, including National Heritage, USA Knight, Creative Capital, Guggenheim, Durfee and Irvine Dance Fellowships, plus the Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture. Her essays have been published widely, and she’s a much sought after speaker. She holds a degree in classical dance from Phnom Penh’s National School of Fine Arts and a BA in dance ethnology from UCLA.
TONI SHAPIRO-PHIM is a cultural anthropologist and dance ethnologist with a specialization in the arts of Cambodia. She first conducted fieldwork in Cambodia in the early 1990s, and worked in Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese refugee camps in Thailand and Indonesia before that. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University, writing about the relationship between war and dance in Cambodia, and has held research and teaching positions focused on arts and social justice at the University of California, Berkeley (South and Southeast Asian Studies Department), Mills College (Women’s Leadership Institute), Yale University (Cambodian Genocide Program) and, most recently, at Bryn Mawr College (Anthropology and Dance Departments). She has participated in workshops and training on creativity and conflict transformation at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland and at Brandeis University’s Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life.
Her writing has appeared in books on genocide (Annihilating Difference: the Anthropology of Genocide, 2002) and conflict transformation (Dancing at the Crossroads, in press), in journals and magazines about Asia and the arts, including Fiber Arts, Dance Research Journal and Asian Arts and Culture, and in international encyclopedias such as The Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre, 2007 and the Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, 2001. She is a co-editor of Dance, Human Rights and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion, 2008, and co-author of Dance in Cambodia, 1999.
She has received American Association of University Women, Asian Cultural Council, Hawaii Committee for the Humanities, Fulbright and MacArthur Foundation Peace Studies grants and fellowships, among other awards.
PRUMSODUN OK is guided by love. He works to positively transform our world through his practice as an artist, teacher, storyteller and idea generator. His interdisciplinary performances contemplate Rene Daumal’s expression of “the avant-garde in antiquity,” mining the tradition of Cambodian classical dance to explore the intersection of contemporary social issues with new possibilities for performance. Prum has presented his original works at venues such as REDCAT (NOW Festival 2012, Studio 2009 & 2010), Highways, KUNST-STOFF arts/fest, CounterPULSE and Pieter among others. His writings have been published by the Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA), Salon.com, LA Stage Times, In Dance Magazine and featured by the California Dance Network. Among many honors, Prum is a TED Fellow, a Master Artist in ACTA's Apprenticeship Program, an Association of Performing Arts Presenters Artist Fellow, and was a mentee to Oguri through the Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange Grant. Currently, he is Associate Artistic Director of Khmer Arts and serves on the board of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts. Prum's projects in progress include an innovative book titled Ream Eyso and Moni Mekhala, a "musical" to be performed in Cambodian dance ritual, and the Sala Center for Art and Culture. To be based in central Long Beach—the poorest but most culturally dynamic area of the city—Sala will provide a platform for traditional performing artists to inspire young people, nurture healthy communities, and redefine the landscape of art and culture.
Last, and most certainly not least, Prum is forever thankful to the many teachers and mentors who have graced his life: dancers Sophiline Cheam Shapiro and Oguri; vanguard composer Charles Boone; filmmakers Ernie Gehr, Brook Hinton, Jeanne Liotta, and George Kuchar; opera director Peter Sellars; and scholars David Gere and Anurima Banerji.
Drawing, for BRIAN MENDEZ, is a dialogue and collaboration with the natural world. The process of putting graphite to paper’s surface and fibers is a communion with these materials’ origins: the trees, forests, soil, and earth. By this action, communication with the materiality of all life on earth is allowed.
In his practice, Brian looks to the paper’s surface to speak to him, to respond to his hand’s movements and to guide it. He considers the result a symbiotic design, a glimpse of the world's collective ancestry, and a meditation on our relationship to nature and time. Brian considers the symbols that emerge from the collaboration to be an appeal to the visceral in all of us, an attempt at cataloguing the unnoticed and ignored which abounds, and the markings that we see when we close our eyes but do not sleep. The work is about reconciling with our environments and it is a hope of discovering what has been forgotten and lost.
