Women With Clout Sophiline Cheam Shapiro – The Arts

By Jody Hanson, Ph.D

PHNOM PENH, (Khmer Times) – Artistic director and co-founder of Khmer Arts is an impressive title that translates as a lot of work and responsibility. Born in Phnom Penh, Sophiline was among the first generation of students to graduate from the Royal University of Fine Arts after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. In 1991, she married John Shapiro, an American, and immigrated to the United States where she studied dance ethnology at UCLA.

“At the time, I was fighting two competing feelings,” says Sophiline. “On the one hand, I was excited to build a new life with the man I had just married and to explore all the opportunities the USA had to offer. But on the other, I felt guilty for abandoning my teachers who had spent so many years training my generation to perpetuate a tradition. I resolved this internal conflict by committing myself to playing whatever role I could within the dance world, wherever I happened to be.”

So upon Sophiline’s arrival in southern California, she began teaching local children classical Khmer dance and performing in festivals. In 2002, she and John established Khmer Arts, an international non-governmental organization (NGO), whose mission it is to foster the vitality of Cambodian dance and music across borders. As the artistic director, Sophiline comments, “I envision our work as a nexus of arts and culture in a transnational community.”

Khmer Arts maintains dual-bases in the Cambodian Town section of Long Beach, California, and in Takhmao, Cambodia. Their programs include a year-round academy in Long Beach and a professional dance company in Cambodia: Sophiline Arts Ensemble. The ensemble is renowned for its exquisite technique, its ability to expand the classical repertory and for its collaborations across disciplines.

Khmer Arts also produces videos, musical recordings – which can be downloaded – and books.

Since 1999, Sophiline has been creating groundbreaking original dances. She has worked with some of Cambodia’s best dancers and toured to perform on major stages around the globe. Venues have included Amsterdam’s Muziektheater, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Los Angeles’ Disney Concert Hall, New York’s Joyce Theater, the Venice Biennale and Vienna’s Schonbrunn Palace Theater. Her productions include “Stained,” “The Lives of Giants,” “Munkul Lokey/Shir Ha-Shirm” and others.

Sophiline has amassed a number of awards. These include becoming a McKnight International Artist Fellow in 2013 and being awarded both a National Heritage Fellowship and a USA Knight Fellowship in 2009. In 2006, she became the first Cambodian and first choreographer to receive the Nikkei Asia prize for culture in 2006. The only other Cambodian to receive this prestigious international prize since is famed architect Dr. Vann Molyvann.

Sophiline Arts Ensemble’s most recent production (see page 7) is “A Bend in the River,” which premiered in the USA last year to rave reviews and will have its Cambodian opening at Phnom Penh’s Chaktomuk Hall from 13 to 15 June, 2014.