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Culture: Reviving Hope

by Proeung Chhieng
Dancer dressed as a prince on the main causeway at Angkor Wat, 1921 [Reproduced from The Apsaras of Angkor, Sipar Jazz Editions]

A civilization can be bright only when there is a good relationship and a balance between the culture and the social structure. Culture could be thought of as any activities that create values and knowledge for human society-what are termed Buddhii in Khmer (Cambodian language). The social structure--the organization of society--should aim to enhance progress toward the realization of peace for the body or material aspect. Buddhii infuse the social structure with moral values and ethics and bring about peace of mind and spirit.

Only when culture is strong can society progress. This balance is necessary for the flourishing of a nation and its civilization; only when the body is healthy and the spirit content can human beings know true happiness.

A Dark Age

Following the great Angkor period from the 9th to the 14th centuries, Cambodia suffered a succession of bitter wars caused by both foreign aggression and civil strife. As a result, the culture, our most valuable national heritage, was almost extinguished. The most severe threat came with the 1975-1979 genocidal Pol Pot regime, when the Khmer Rouge hatched its foolish ambitions to transform Cambodia into what they called a "new society."

The Khmer Rouge sought to destroy all the infrastructure of the old society, including the traditional Khmer dances and art forms, under the pretext that these were the heritage of the feudal regime. Artists, both men and women, were arrested, tortured and killed. Others were brought to the brink of death by forced labor and malnutrition.

The Khmer Rouge killed the deans, professors, teachers, students, musicians, singers--the living documents of national culture. They also almost completely destroyed all written documentation, films, art-works, instruments and recordings.

Those former artists and academics who were not murdered were barely able to survive; they lived in constant fear, without hope, waiting only for their turn to die.

When this barbarous regime finally fell on January 7, 1979, the new government of the People's Republic of Cambodia sent people throughout the country to search for skilled persons in all fields, and appealed to them to help rebuild the country. At that time, professional arts groups managed by the state and locally organized artists groups began to reemerge in nearly all the provinces, in cities and local communities. In Phnom Penh, there was a central group of artists with the Ministry of Culture and Information, which gathered together artists, teachers, academics and students of the arts.

Rebirth

In 1980, the government authorized the urgent opening of a national arts festival. The aim was to collect information on the art forms and former artists who survived, with a view to formulating goals and guidelines for a plan to rebuild Cambodian arts and culture.

Proeung Chhieng was one of the first male dancers to interpret the role of Hanuman, the monkey king, in the Reamker, the Cambodian version of the Ramayana [Reproduced from The Apsaras of Angkor, Sipar Jazz Editions]

After the national arts festival, we discovered that only about 10 percent of the teachers and students of the arts alive in 1975 had survived. As for art forms, some had been completely lost; some others needed immediate attention in order to rebuild them, as the surviving teachers, the custodians of those arts, were old and in poor health. To cope with such a grave situation, it was decided to reopen the School of Fine Arts. In the first year, 1980/81, there were a total of 480 students. Eighty percent of them were orphans, the sons or daughters of the artists who died during the Khmer Rouge years.

The task of any school of fine arts is to develop the human resources which are the seeds of the new generation in the field of national arts and culture. For Cambodia such people represent and embody the national spirit and identity, the hope and national pride of every Cambodian. The Royal Ballet, or Traditional Khmer Dance, for example, is a form of sacred art with religious content and a humanistic spirit. The female dancers were originally the Devadasi, with the role of making dedications to the gods. Over the many centuries that this dance form has existed, they have been messengers of peace between the human world and the world of the gods; they are peace dancers, incarnations of spiritual peace teaching and propagating moral values and ethics for the sake of peace in Cambodia. This dance is an art which embodies both religious ceremony and a social ideal.

Bas-relief of Apsara, 13th century, Bayon temple, Angkor Wat [Reproduced from The Apsaras of Angkor, Sipar Jazz Editions]

Because of their deep appreciation of the value of our arts and culture, the surviving artists and their few surviving teachers underwent countless sacrifices in order to rebuild the art forms, despite the very difficult conditions after the Khmer Rouge regime.

The artists groups, moreover, were also busy giving public performances for people who had been eagerly awaiting this for so long. These performances of the traditional arts were a light of hope for the artists themselves as well as for every Cambodian; they represented a reemergence of the vital spirit and unique identity of the Cambodian people. As the saying goes, "The extinction of culture means the disappearance of the nation."

The Royal University of Fine Arts (RUFA) is now training and developing highly skilled practitioners of Cambodian arts and culture, which are a strong and essential force for sustainable social development. The dance students we have been training are indeed the true strength of knowledge in arts and culture. They have devoted themselves to the search of truth for the sake of the country's development. They are like new bamboo shoots, or the new hope of a better Cambodia.

The Royal Cambodian Ballet performing in Japan, 2002 [Min-On]

HE Proeung Chhieng trained as a dancer during the 1960s. He is now Vice Rector and Dean of the Faculty of Choreographic Arts at the Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh.

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