Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-kw2vx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T05:11:04.987Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cambodia's Seasons of Migration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2012

Toni Shapiro-Phim
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In classical Khmer dance dramas, the fluidity of gestural and choreographic movement is complemented by the seamlessness with which mythical figures move between the realms of sky, earth, and sea. Such mythical migrations have been the subject of Khmer dance dramas for centuries. In this essay I explore the recent development and performance of one specific danced story of migration and the performers' social realities that complicate their relationship to their art and to this story in particular. I discuss transnational migration's impact on current and future possibilities for Khmer classical dance, and the lessons Cambodia's female dancers take from the fluidity, adaptability, and flexibility required of Khmer choreography as they negotiate their immediate social, cultural, and political upheavals.

Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , Winter 2008 , pp. 56 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum. 2006. Health Brief: Cambodians in the United States. Revised edition. Available online at http://www.apiahf.org/resources/pdf/Cambodians_in_the_United_States.pdf.Google Scholar
Bateson, Mary Catherine. 1990. Composing a Life. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Chan, Margaret. 2004. “Negotiating Artistic Spaces: Beijing Opera and the Cultural Revolution in China.” In Right to Dance: Dancing for Rights, edited by Jackson, Naomi, 99–122. Banff, Canada: Banff Centre Press.Google Scholar
Chatterjea, Ananya. 2004. Butting Out: Reading Resistive Choreographies through Works by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Chandrealekha. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Cravath, Paul. 1985. “Earth in Flower: An Historical and Descriptive Study of the Classical Dance Drama of Cambodia.” Ph.D. diss., University of Hawaii.Google Scholar
Derks, Annuska. 2008. Khmer Women on the Move: Exploring Work and Life in Urban Cambodia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frieson, Kate. 1998. “Guardian Angels: Women as Defenders of State, Race, and Nation in Post-colonial Cambodia.” Paper delivered at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, March 26–29, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Greenhouse, Carol J., Mertz, Elizabeth, and Warren, Kay B., eds. 2002. Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hahn, Tomie. 2007. Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Hedges, Chris. 2002. War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. New York: Public Affairs.Google Scholar
Heuveline, Patrick. 1998. “Between One and Three Million: Towards the Demographic Reconstruction of a Decade of Cambodian History (1970–79),” Population Studies 52: 49–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huckstep, Joan. 2005. “Embodied Nationalism: ‘Animation Politique’ in Zaire.” Ph.D. diss., Temple University.Google Scholar
Kiernan, Ben. 1996. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power and Genocide in Cambodia Under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
LICADHO. 2007. Violence Against Women in Cambodia, 2006. Phnom Penh: Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights.Google Scholar
Ly, Daravuth, and Muan, Ingrid. 2000. The Legacy of Absence: A Cambodian Story. Phnom Penh: Reyum Gallery.Google Scholar
Manning, Susan. 1993. Ecstasy and the Demon: Feminism and Nationalism in the Dances of Mary Wigman. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
McKinley, Kathy. 2002. “Ritual, Performativity and Music: Cambodian Wedding Music in Phnom Penh.” Ph.D. diss., Brown University.Google Scholar
Moisala, Pirkko, and Diamond, Beverley, eds. 2000. Music and Gender. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Phim, Toni S., and Thompson, Ashley. 1999. Dance in Cambodia. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sam, Sam-Ang. 1988. “The Pin Peat Ensemble: Its History, Music and Context.” Ph.D. diss., Wesleyan University.Google Scholar
Seasons Migration. 2005. DVD. Directed by John Bishop. Long Beach, CA: Khmer Arts Academy.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Toni. 1994. “Dance and the Spirit of Cambodia.” Ph.D. diss., Cornell University.Google Scholar
Shapiro-Phim, Toni. 2002. “Dance, Music, and the Nature of Terror in Democratic Kampuchea.” In Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide, edited by Hinton, Alexander, 179–93. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapiro-Phim, Toni. 2004. “Reflections on the Serpent's Tail,” Works in Progress 17 (3): 8–11, 23.Google Scholar
Smith-Hefner, Nancy J. 1999. Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vickery, Michael. 1984. Cambodia, 1975–1982. Boston: South End Press.Google Scholar