Apsara Dancer - Voan Savay
My sincere thanks to Lucie Leng for the following:
In 1973, Voan Savay was in Phnom Penh, practising dance in the Royal Palace. From 1975 to 1979 she was working in the countryside. In 1979, she returned to Phnom Penh and, with other dancers and musicians who had survived, began to perform again in the Bassac Theatre, near the Mekong.
In 1981, she got married and decided, with her husband (also an artist), to leave Cambodia. She wanted to escape from war. But when she was about to cross the border, she realized that she couldn't leave just like that. So she stayed on the border with her husband, and they moved into Site II, a Cambodian refugee camp.
She lived there for ten years, teaching classical dance to orphans and children, and created a dance school in the Site II Cultural Centre. Her dancers were superb; they had their own musicians, and they performed many times in Thailand. Sometimes Princess Bopha Devi asked for her help in the Site B Camp, and so did others from Site 8.
In 1991, her dance group - consisting of 53 people including musicians, costumiers and dancers - toured the USA for 3 months. Later the same year, she returned to Cambodia and set up an artists’ village outside Phnom Penh. Within a few years she was invited to join the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, and her troupe was absorbed by the Dept. of Performing Arts. In 1997, she was touring in France when the coup d'état took place. She requested political asylum in France, and has been living there ever since.
She was later joined by her husband and two sons. They were living in the French countryside until 2005, when they moved to Paris. A year later, Prince Tesso Sisowath asked her to produce a dance performance of the Reamker, which she did successfully with the help of several associations - Cabaret des Oiseaux, led by Santha Leng (Lucie Leng's father), and Selepak Khmer. From this time, she began to teach in several dance schools in Paris, among them Cabaret des Oiseaux and Selepak Khmer. She also helped to recreate the Ballet Classique Khmer, where she is still teaching.
In the last few years, she has been invited by former students in Canada and the USA to give classes. Last year, she went to the USA for several months, and this year she was in Canada for a few months. She also comes regularly to Cambodia and when she is in Phnom Penh, Princess Bopha Devi always asks her for help.
She is very precious to all the students in France because she knows so much about the dance, the music and the rituals, and she is able to dance many different roles. And she is also very generous, as you can see from her story.