Dancers Now
Yuvanna gave her first post-Pol Pot performance before an audience of Vietnamese soldiers in Siem Reap who were staying at the hotel where she and her sister were working. She was told that the new government in Phnom Penh was calling for dancers to restore the art, so she went back to the city, where she became a teacher. One of her brothers was working in the Ministry of Culture. She worked with others to save the remnants of their art, including costumes and accessories from the Royal Palace. Training and performance took place in the Preah Suramarit National Theatre. From 1980 she was teaching for a short time before rejoining the troupe as a dancer. In this capacity, she traveled abroad to perform in China, Vietnam, Hungary, Bulgaria, the USA and England. In 1999 she started teaching at the Faculty of Choreographic Arts (since 2006, the Secondary School of Fine Arts). She has taught some foreign students, including Indian, Thai, English and Japanese dancers. Her first trip to Japan was in 2002 with Sophiline Cheam Shapiro. Around 2003, she started teaching Hitomi Yamanaka, who brought her back to Japan in 2006. On September 30th, they danced in Angyohji temple, Tokyo. After that she returned to Japan twice to teach and perform. Yuvanna died from cancer in 2021 at the age of 71.
Menh Kossony was one of the few surviving star dancers of the Royal ballet. It was she who had been featured in one of the rare filmed performances of the early seventies, along with Kem Bunnak and a few others. This was a 1971 American TV documentary which claimed to be the final record of the Khmer Royal Ballet before its demise. It was also she who was photographed for the monumental issue of Nokor Khmer magazine, which was one of the first attempts to describe the “kbach” (narrative dance gestures) in detail through illustration with an English text.
After the fall of the Pol Pot regime, Kossony returned to Phnom Penh and continued her dance studies. She is one of the key teachers with the ability to transmit her knowledge to the next generation of dancers. She has toured extensively, performing throughout Europe and Asia, North America and Africa, and has choreographed some classical dance works, among the most recent of which is “Deviat Serey Sua” (Goddess and Angels in Heaven). She was Deputy Director General in charge of the Secondary School of Fine Arts, and Departments of Cultural Development and Performing Arts, and founder and director of UNESCO’s Classical Dance Mentoring Program, and is currently Secretary of State in the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts.
Prum Sisaphantha went to Battambang in 1979 and became a dancer and theatrical player at the Dept. of Information and Culture there. She then went to study in Russia and graduated with a Russian high school diploma. From 1986 to 1992 she was a teacher of Russian Language at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. After 1992 she taught English at RUPP and the Institute of Foreign Languages, and Khmer Culture at the International School of Phnom Penh. From 2002 to 2005 she was in Japan working for Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) as a Khmer Language teacher at their Nihonmatsu Training Centre. While she was there, she performed Khmer classical dance with Hitomi Yamanaka, who was Om Yuvanna’s student (see video). During this time, she completed and published a book, “Apsara”, in collaboration with Ms. Keo Narom. From 2007 to 2010 she was Course Manager of the Exchange Program at the Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Center (CJCC) and since 2010, lecturer at the Institute of Foreign Languages. She received her Master’s Degree in Linguistics in 2013. Currently, Phantha continues to pursue her research into the multiple meanings and documentation of the 4500 expressions of Khmer dance.
Yim Sanak began studying folk dance in the late sixties at RUFA (Royal University of Fine Arts) at the same time that Phantha was studying western ballet. Both once had the honour of performing for (then) HM Prince Norodom Sihanouk, at the reception ceremony for the Presidential Delegation at Chamkarmon Palace, and were delighted to receive a royal gift of 200 Riels (at that time a bowl of noodle soup cost only 3 Riels). Sanak confirmed that the dance performance I attended in late 1974 was the last before the Khmer Rouge took power. She was 24 years old at that time. During the Pol Pot time, Sanak did not hide the fact that she had been a dancer, as some people already knew she had been an artist. In her village, the Khmer Rouge did not often kill women. Mao Keng, now Sanak’s husband, was also a folk dancer. They were at RUFA together as students, and when they met again in 1980, they decided to get married. They both took up dancing again. Sanak performed both “folklorique” and Yike dance (Tum Teav and Maktoeung). She went to perform in Laos in 1980 with Voan Savay. She retired as a performing dancer in 1990, but continued to teach art until 2000. Neither Sanak nor Keng had any photos from their past. Keng had kept one photo of himself dancing as a deer in the Trot dance, but it was destroyed. The two photos from 1974 are the only memories of Sanak’s dancing career prior to the Pol Pot regime. Mao Keng was Director of the Department of Performing Arts from 2000-2015. Both he and his wife are now retired. Their two children are married and they have four grandchildren.
