Phantha and the Dance
From March 1973 until March 1975, I was working as a teacher at ETAPP* Language Center in Phnom Penh. One Saturday afternoon in mid-November, 1974, the secretary asked me to come to her teacher’s house and take pictures “for documentation”. Not knowing exactly what to expect, I was intrigued by this proposition and agreed. We went to the house and she disappeared for a while, reappearing beautifully dressed in a silk dance practice costume. She rigged up a backdrop of Chinese brocade and we were ready for a ‘shoot’. Since I had no flash, all photos were taken with available light from the window, at as slow a speed as possible. She went through a succession of dance poses, balancing on a somewhat shaky wooden floor and holding each pose for seconds at a time while I, my back against the wall, clicked away. I shot a whole film and most of the frames came out. I had two sets of prints made, kept one set and gave the other to her along with the negatives, since she had paid for the film. A few months later, ETAPP closed, I left Cambodia on April 7th, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh on the 17th, and I never saw her again. I couldn’t even remember her name. But I had the prints, and they haunted me.
Forty years later I met her again on 27th February, 2015, in Phnom Penh. She had been identified from my photos by Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, the renowned choreographer of Khmer dance, and her name was Prum Sisaphantha, known to most as "Phantha". This is her story:
When the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh, they ordered the entire population to leave the city to escape American bombing. They said this would only be for a few days, so Phantha took the prints but left the negatives and other documents concealed in the house. Her project was to write a book about Khmer classical dance; this was something she had set her heart on, and she considered these photographs to be an important reference. From 1967 until 1972, Phantha had studied Western Ballet. She had noticed the abundance of literature on Western dance and the contrasting dearth of such documentation on Khmer dance. This inspired her ambition.
Phantha and her family were sent to Battambang by train, and later she was sent to Pursat to work on a dam. She left the pictures with her sister, wrapped in plastic and hidden in a mosquito net. It was a women’s group so there were no men, but one day Khmer Rouge soldiers came to check the houses while the women were at work. When her sister returned, she found the photos in the mud, torn to pieces, destroyed. When Phantha came back from Pursat and found what had happened, she was so sad that she cried. Her sister stopped her, fearing the Khmer Rouge might kill her if they found out. This happened in 1978, so she had kept the photos hidden for three years. She also kept her ETAPP identity card, and luckily the Khmer Rouge never found it.
In 1979 when the Vietnamese drove out the Khmer Rouge, Phantha went back to Phnom Penh. She found their house in smoking ruins, the books and negatives freshly reduced to ashes. She wrote on the wall with charcoal: "Three people still alive in Battambang".
In the final picture from the ’74 “session”, there is another dancer. She was Sisowath Khema Watthei, of royal blood, the adopted daughter of Chea Samy, who was Phantha’s teacher. Chea Samy also appears in one of the dressing room photos from the National Theatre performance in 1973.
*English Teachers’ Association of Phnom Penh