Peacebuilding and the Arts

A dance archive for Cambodia and Cambodians

By Toni Shapiro-Phim, Assistant Director of the Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts

In 1989, ten years after the fall of the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979, under the leadership of Pol Pot), Cambodians still found themselves engulfed in violence. Hundreds of thousands of those who had fled famine and ongoing war, running across the country’s border to the west with Thailand, ended up in displaced persons’ camps, in a war zone nonetheless. The millions who chose to stay in their homeland were subject to much deprivation as the United States imposed an embargo on Cambodia, seeing as it was governed in coalition with Vietnam at the time, and as the Khmer Rouge, in their almost-four years in power, had destroyed the nation’s infrastructure and starved or otherwise murdered between a quarter and a third of Cambodia’s entire population. They were also subject to a war between various factions fighting against those in power. In that year, 1989, I went to work in the largest Cambodian displaced persons’ camp, situated on Thai soil. And I went into Cambodia to conduct dissertation research beginning in 1990. In both places – sites of chaos and danger and unknown immediate and long-term futures – I found exquisite artistry and a striving to both recreate a heritage that had been decimated by the genocide and continued fighting and displacement, and to imagine and bring into being a future of peace and beauty.

In Site 2 camp, and inside Cambodia, I was lucky and honored to work with accomplished and aspiring dancers and musicians -- with knowledgeable culture bearers and young people eager to absorb all they could from them -- as I explored the relationship between war and dance. I ended up being guided by the artists themselves, who collaborated with me to document what they were doing in such precarious circumstances. Classical or court dance is intimately related to spirits of the land, and to the royalty in Cambodia. One origin myth of the Khmer (the majority ethnic group of Cambodia) posits that a celestial dancer is the mother of the people. Dance was a potent means through which to counter loss, indignities, and cultural disruption. By the time I decided to return to the United States to complete my PhD, I had amassed a trove of more than 200 videotapes, totaling more than 300 hours of material. These were bulky VHS tapes, as this was before digital cameras were available. In 1994 I was able to get a grant to make archival copies of the tapes. These were even bulkier, in Beta SP format.

I had left copies of the videotapes I shot in Site 2 camp with the artists there. But a fire destroyed that section of the camp, and all the tapes. I had given copies of some of the tapes shot inside Cambodia to artists there, but the heat and humidity ate away at them. After many twists and turns over the years – including the use of some of my footage by filmmakers – I was recently able to secure funding to digitize the full collection. MIRO Dance Theatre in Cambodia is the fiscal agent for this project. Artists who appear in the tapes are receiving a stipend to watch them and to weigh in on how and where each might best be utilized: Should they be a resource for a specific year of study in the dance department at the Secondary School or University of Fine Arts? Should some footage be made into a documentary? Are they important to show to policy makers considering the fate of cultural programs in the country?

While this work continues, the digital files of all the tapes will soon be housed at the Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Founded by acclaimed filmmaker Rithy Panh, Bophana   is an archive that is free and open to the public, prioritizing materials related to Cambodian culture and history.

In December, 2021, some of the dancers and choreographers with whom I had worked most closely all those years ago joined me in an online panel discussion about the videotapes, and what seeing them, and having them, means to them now as teachers, performers, administrators and creators. (The panel discussion was organized and hosted by the Center for Khmer Studies, based in Siem Reap, Cambodia.) They spoke (and wept) openly about their perseverance; they mourned the loss of their teachers, mentors and peers who are no longer with us. And they look forward, they said, to studying the movements and words (captured on tape) of those who carried invaluable knowledge within their bodies since long before the Khmer Rouge years during which an estimated 80% or more of Cambodia’s professional artists perished, as a way to honor them even while they create anew, in a new context.