NOTE: There is so much to say about my trip to Khmer Arts in the Takhmao province that I am splitting up the posts. Here is part one.
Of course I got lost trying to find it, pedaling around in a full circle and warily heading down a road that seemed to be never ending and not really taking me anywhere where I might want to go. I decided to trust my instinct that it was farther than I thought and kept going, alone and sweaty in the middle of nowhere and pedaling away on a one speed bike.
I finally found street 115, much farther than I was expecting and just as I was about to go over a bridge to god-knows-where, a dirt road that sped off into apparent no man's land, construction everywhere. But as I biked alone, I started to hear music -- traditional music. I veered of the hot, dry, and dusty path to the right, and found myself abruptly in the most wonderful oasis.
It was like someone had made a bubble around the place, cutting off the outside sounds. I parked my bike in a small lot with palm trees, the traditional music loud now. In front of me was the theater -- but nothing like any theater I'd seen. It was a huge pavilion, covered, wide open spaces (no chairs) and a patterned tile floors. Huge green sheets were hung from the high ceilings, to keep out the dust, I suppose.
On the side away from the road was the stage, and behind it, what looked like a temple. Four huge pagodas with faces carved on all four sides; some smiling deity with blank eyes and tall, stacked hats. Stairs wound up an around, from the stage and around the back. Palm trees had taken root -- or planted, more likely -- in every corner, and the stone was all intricately, beautifully carved. Naga, the snake guardians, and on the bannisters little monkeys crouched to hold it up.
I did some exploring -- I found the band, practicing in a small room under the stage, and all of the motos on the other side. The offices were clearly inside the "temple", and onstage some twenty five women were doing the slow, intricate, and elegant dance that is Cambodian classical dance.
Almost all were wearing tight bodices with dozens of little buttons running from navel to breastbone, and the traditional wrapped pants (which I think is just one piece of Cambodian silk, wrapped in a certain way, threaded through the legs, and fastened by a metal belt). A different music was playing through the speakers, drowning out the band below.
Wandering among them and fixing hands, pushing hips and shoulders back, was Ms Sophiline Shapiro, a woman I had heard of often and with great praise. She was a small woman, hair still very black and cut short for a Cambodian woman, in a long wrapped skirt. One of the greatest Cambodian classical dancers, she was forced to live in the countryside during the Khmer Rouge and was one of the first graduates of the Royal University of Fine Arts. She studied at UCLA in the United States, and then launched Khmer Arts in the hopes of reviving the classical arts.
I had heard she was working on a contemporary form of classical dance, that the Ministry of Culture wasn't sure about what she was doing, and generally had been told to get there and talk to her at all costs.
So there I was, watching her work, still elegant and most definitely the master. Sitting on the concrete steps and looking up in the faces of the gods and thinking, I never want to leave this place.
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