Cambodia's Cultural Crown Jewel

By ROBERT GRESKOVIC  
The Wall Street Journal
Brooklyn
 

Phnom Penh's Royal Ballet of Cambodia, the country's exponent of Khmer classical dance, has roots going at least as far back as the ninth century. Like a crown jewel, the dance-and-music troupe's appearances capped the Season of Cambodia, a two-month series of events and exhibitions in New York. Performances of "The Legend of Apsara Mera," choreographed by Her Royal Highness Princess Norodom Buppha Devi, played last week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

The sculptor Auguste Rodin once noted that the perfection of Khmer classical dance was equaled only by the classicism of the Greeks. It is restrained and formal, in tone more contemplative than dramatic. Physically, where Western classical ballet is grounded in five numbered positions for the feet, Khmer's ballet has its foundation in four key hand positions, all articulated by seemingly boneless fingers and named for aspects of nature: tree, leaf, flower, fruit.

Keeping dance traditions as old and formal as these alive and of interest to contemporary audiences can be complicated. For the Royal Ballet of Cambodia, the complications were compounded by its country's French protectorate status, which from the late-19th to the middle of the 20th century resulted in a reduction of support for the courtly art. Far more disastrously, from 1975 to 1979 the brutal repressions of the Khmer Rouge regime all but wiped out the dance traditions and its practitioners.

After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, the Royal Ballet was gradually restored and has worked under royal patronage to reshape itself without losing its connection to its historic ways of dancing and music making. The current troupe toured with 21 female and three male dancers, as well as five musicians and four singers. The approximately 90-minute production shown here revealed both the strengths and weaknesses of balancing tradition with modernization.

Act One of "Legend," which is itself divided into four episodes, begins with a ceremony for the god Vishnu as an overture, followed by short enactments of scenes from Cambodia's "Reamker," an epic poem from the Sanskrit "Ramayana." Earlier "Reamker" stagings lasted all night. These scenes, telling of battles between gods and giants, with appearances by Vishnu and a goddess named Mohini, took about 30 minutes. Arranged as a sampler of characters from Khmer classical dance, they felt like compressed demonstrations introducing key figures such as the giant Asura and the monkey Hanuman.

The most effective of the patchy first act's theatrical scenes occurred toward the end, during an interaction recounting the possession of the elixir of eternity. The beautiful Mohini, serenely performed by Chap Chamroeuntola, toyed with a small mirrored ball, meant to blind her giant foe and wrest the lotuslike elixir from him, in back-and-forth actions as playful as they were decisive.

With the unfolding of Act Two, where the Apsaras—the celestial nymphs of the dance form's heritage—dominate, the program hit its stride and shimmered hypnotically, as if the subtle, sinuous and liquid ways of these female dancers embodied the ever-changing waves of light on watered silk. Crowned by a golden, winged headdress as detailed as the spires on Cambodia's famed carved temples, the radiant Meng Chan Chara portrayed Apsara Mera, who legend says mated with Prince Kambu to create the kingdom of Cambodia.

Framed by six women as ladies-in-waiting, Ms. Meng's nymph showed extraordinarily sublime control, creating silken, ever-so-slightly changing postures as seamlessly and evocatively as wisps of vapor. With incremental execution, the dance's signature flipped-up-and-back flexed-leg-and-foot pose looked less like a kicked up heel than a pretty and preened piece of plumage.

When, for the climactic union of Mera and Prince Kambu, portrayed by two female dancers (Chap Chamroeunmina and Chen Chansoda), actual physical contact occurred, the very act of touching was almost shocking given the measured formalities of Khmer classicism's unemphatic methods. While hardly overtly demonstrative, the unexpected shift from pervasively iridescent and decorative presentation to hand-to-hand interchange summarily shattered the fluidly built scene as it described the nymph's spontaneous reactions to her swain's amorous advances.

A stage-filling harmony wrapped up the program, with eight pairs of deities in symmetrical rows framing Mera and her Prince. With the dancers' single-spire headdresses pointing heavenward like so many sharp beams, and the predominance of golden hues in their sarongs (for the goddesses) and draped trousers (for the gods), the finale of "The Legend of Apsara Mera" had the look of a vista of towering temples all animated as if visited by a gentle breeze. With the legendary prince and princess at its center, Cambodia's classical dance was living radiantly ever after.

Mr. Greskovic writes about dance for the Journal.