The phrase I want is, I don't know.

Yes. I know. I haven't blogged in two months. What happened is that I completely ran out of time. I worked all day every day for two and a half months, very barely held myself together, and then hopped on a plane to the other side of the world, where I spent three most excellent weeks with my family.

And then I flew for something like 25 straight hours, and I returned here.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The place that I found myself referring to as "home" while in Denver, Colorado. The place that populated my dreamscape for much of those three weeks, where projects and opportunities await. And the place that is currently just too far away, and full of confusion.

I'm fairly sure at this point that I don't want to live in America -- I'm a citizen, but it's not "my country;" however, it is where my beloved family is. I have skype, but skype does not compare to physical presence, and three weeks a year is a very short time to share.

But I am not there. I am here. I am here, where projects are falling down around my ears. I am here, with no real idea of where my career is leading me. I am here, where despite it all I feel so settled, and ever since my feet touched down last week, people all over the city have welcomed me back with staggering warmth. I am here, alone and independent, and my family is over 13000 kilometers away.

You could say it's confusing.

I'm inclined to think that I probably shouldn't even be talking for another two weeks -- the last time I left home, I spent ten days in Paris, which is a very happy place for me, and it still took a couple weeks to settle back into Cambodia.

Is the jet lag, the culture shock, the unsettled energy of the city, the shock of returning to work from vacation?

Most likely.

All I can say is that I've quite lost my way, but somehow I'm here and that's all I know.

(I'll try to get back to blogging, now that my life is not being devoured by work quite as much.)

Battambang and Khmer weddings: Another adventure

One of my Khmer friends from work asked me to present a contemporary dance duet at her wedding. She was having two -- one for her family in Battambang and one in Phnom Penh. I asked one of my students, Dara, to perform with me, and this week, we went to Battambang for the first edition. Thus follows is an account of the occasion. 

===

It starts in a bus station. Activity everywhere. There’s a window for tickets, and a window to send/receive goods, people sending things on buses because the post doesn’t actually work – though, really, this is the post. Where do you want it to go? The driver will drop it.

Every so often, a fine spray of cool water spouts from the ceiling like the fire extinguishing system in a museum, and people wait, for the bus or for their friends.

We (being me and one of my students, Dara) get on the bus. The drive is long and even longer for the fact that something in the bus breaks – I’m not sure what, but it causes the air conditioning and the karaoke videos to stop and the driver to drive with the main door open, slower than usual. I hear him on the phone and though I don’t understand, I know something’s wrong. Not good. I ask Dara to eavesdrop and translate for me. An arrival time of 6:30pm becomes 8:30pm.

Along the way we stop a couple times. Someone discovers I speak Khmer and reads the tattoo on my leg and suddenly I’m a celebrity and the ladies are asking for photos. I tell Dara, “Barang speak Khmer, everyone wants a picture.” Mostly, I spend the time reading, or eavesdropping on Dara’s endless phone conversations.

Dara and I on the bus. 

We get to Battambang, and find our way to a hotel, and then food. Dara spends the whole time on his iPhone. Oh well – he’s a teenager. I watch the girls run around and wonder when the food is coming.

Dara digilently on his phone. 

==

The next day starts at 5:45am. Dara and I, bleary eyed, try to get ready in time for our pickup at 6am from the hotel. An Uncle and Aunt of my friend are waiting to take us to the house, where a tent has already taken over the street and music is blaring. I’m led inside to change into the Khmer traditional clothes I’m being lent. My friend Leak is there, unable to turn her head, a competent gay guy confidently turning her into a goddess.

An Aunt has been assigned to keep me company. The guests are arriving, sitting in the row of chairs along the tent. The ladies group together, either bleary-eyed like me or looking, as wedding guests do, thrilled at themselves and their fancy outfits, all of them in brilliant colors. I can see the family resemblances across the faces. The older women are in special chairs, mostly in brown, calm and smiling. The men are at their own end, looking somewhat subdued in their plain colors, button up shirts and trousers.  

Me in my traditional clothes and the Aunt in charge of me. 

The wedding itself lasts over six hours. There are at least five or six different ceremonies, starting with the parade of gifts. The Aunt in charge of the Barang hands me a silver platter with a box of sweets on it, and everyone, some sixty strong – each with their own gold or silver platter with fruit or sweets – goes on a parade around the block, the musicians, the parents, and the groom in front.

My "gift."

The parade to start the ceremonies. 

No one is more beautiful than a woman on her wedding day and Leak is no exception. Over the course of the morning, she appears in at least six different outfits. Each ceremony – hair cutting, tying of bracelets, exchanging rings – is separated by a change of clothes. The guests mill about as any guests at a wedding, wondering how long the ceremony will take, except here there is food to eat, breakfast and lunch. The close relatives vanish into the room off the tent every so often to perform their duties of giving gifts or whatever it may be, then return and wait at the tables. The musicians sit to the side and play, not watching anything – but it doesn’t matter, because the MC has a microphone and the speakers are cranked.

The bride and groom and all the gifts. 

Beautiful Leak in outfit 3 or 4. 

The relatives are so kind, including me in the ceremonies, finding places for me to sit, and commenting on my outfits – I change once. They love that I’m wearing traditional clothes, and tell me I look beautiful. I’m the only barang around and everyone is curious, but very kind.

Dara vanishes sometime in the morning and after lunch the early morning is catching up. The mother of the bride sends me off with a different set of Aunt and Uncle and a packed lunch for Dara. He eats and I sleep, waking up a full hour later and thinking I only dropped off.

We – or that is, I do, and Dara decides to come with – decide to go off in search of coffee. I look up the main coffeehouse in Battambang and off we go. It’s very close – the city is small, and quiet. The buildings – at most three stories high – seem very short in comparison to Phnom Penh. I wonder where all the people are.

We run into someone we know – the guy who heads Krom, which Dara’s sisters are part of, and his daughter, and they join us for coffee. We spend a lovely time chatting.

A little bit and a walk to an ATM later, it’s time to go to the wedding reception. Yet another Aunt and Uncle come to pick us up. We are ushered to the artists room, where the same competent gay guys are hanging out. They want to know if I’m planning to do any more makeup. I say I don’t have any, and suddenly I’m ushered into a chair, and one starts painting my face like an artist. When he’s done, he starts on my hair, and some half hour later, the transformation is complete.

Getting my face painted. 

Ready to dance. 

Leak arrives in a rush and says there’s a problem with the music as she’s ushered into a new outfit, this one a long beautiful white dress. This prompts a rush of activity. Dara runs off to deal with the sound people, and when he gets back, we are asked if we can dance now. I ask for ten minutes to warm up, which is granted. The MC is given our names, I triple-check Leak actually wants me to say something, and then we are out the door.

The stage is tiny and we are way off the music, waiting for the end of the first song much longer than usual, so we improvise – Dara is right there with me, thank heavens. It’s not perfect, but the reviews are fantastic. The groom tells me that everyone stopped eating and paid attention when we danced, which makes me happy.

We eat and there’s dancing. The father of the bride gets roaringly drunk and starts feeding people shots of whiskey—including me, three times, the mother of the bride protecting me.

The party winds down around 9pm and an Uncle – I can’t remember if he’s the same or not – sends us back to the hotel. Dara decides to leave early so I give him the share of the generous gift Leak slipped me and send him on his way. Tomorrow the family wants to take me around Battambang, so I have to change my bus ticket in the morning to leave in the afternoon instead of the morning.

It was a crazy day, but testament to the work I’ve put in to make this place – in all of its uncertainty, frustration, and beauty – a part of me, and me a part of it. Here I am, in Battambang, part of a wedding, a family, on the outside and inside, doing what I love, with a good friend by my side. I would say, that’s a win. 

Why am I here?: The ups and downs of life in Cambodia

I suppose it would happen in any country, to anyone living anywhere, abroad or otherwise -- though perhaps especially for expatriates like me. Every few months, you start to wonder what you're doing here, because the things you think you want morph, the things you think you came for vanish, and in between there is a whole lot of gray to deal with.

It's not as though there are not opportunities in Cambodia -- in fact, there are so many that I'm working close to 50-60 hours per week between three jobs and my extra projects, which include a number of performances to dance in and create.

But it just doesn't look like I thought. Most of my recent frustration has come from my attempts to start "Pandaemonium Dance", which I had pictured as intense training and rehearsal with a number of dedicated dancers, building up to a variety of performances. I spent a long time worrying about the fact that I have no paid opportunities yet and not wanting to waste the dancers' time, and yet thinking they would be there to build the thing up with me.

Except, as artists do everywhere in the world, that's not the case. As the producer/creator, you are always the one who cares the most, and the others are there because it is one opportunity among many and they don't want to miss anything, so they do everything 50% instead of throwing 200% into one thing to build it and see it through.

What does that mean? It means that every week, some dancers are missing because they have other shows, other rehearsals. Saying they are free to rehearse at a certain time -- which they all did -- does not, I've discovered, mean they actually are. That time is not "blocked out" of the schedule as it is with mine, and if something else arrives, well, they try to do everything and if they can't, they say yes to the new one and send me text messages apologizing profusely for not coming.

That's all well and good, but they still aren't coming.

It's frustrating because of course I want it to be as essential to them as it is to me. When I say I'm doing something, I do, and come to every single rehearsal unless I absolutely cannot -- and if another thing comes up, I say I can't do it, I'm already working on something else.

But that is not the case with everyone and everywhere, and in the past few days, I've had to go back to that old question -- what do I want?

Every time in Cambodia when I think my mission is to "help" or to "teach" and that my knowledge is somehow invaluable or essential, I get lost and I have to realize that it is not. These artists are busy. They are good. And they will find their way -- or not -- regardless of what I do. I am not the Doctor or the Know-All, End-All.

It's a sobering thought, but the only way out is to go back to that simple question. What do I want out of being here? Why am I still here, a year and change down the road, and why shouldn't I just leave, as I consider doing every few months? If all these things I want, in life, love, career and etc, seem so very far away, where can I go to find them?

I actually still don't know the answer to those questions and probably never will, but I do know that for whatever reason, I'm not ready to leave this place yet, and I can't picture it.

So I'm having to go back to what there is and go from there, and follow my own heart, do things because I want to and not because I think someone else needs it. And be willing to let my vision of what it is I thought I was doing here to change. As an example, the past week I started judging for a Kpop dance contest on CTN, which is fabulously amusing, but that is not at all what I thought I was coming for -- a TV personality on Cambodian TV, WHAT??? But there it is, and it's fun, and though it is not the artsy fartsy production/creation I had in mind, it is here and happening, and I have to follow it.

Life is complicated, and so is this country, but for better or for worse, I am here, and learning by the day -- and maybe, in the end, that's the real and only reason to be here -- and maybe it's reason enough!

Home of the brave and the blowhards

When I was a little girl, the fourth of July was one of my favorite holidays. Of course I loved the fireworks, but I remember one year at a big party and fireworks show, and they sang "Proud to be an American." I put my hand over my heart and I cried, because I did feel proud.

Times have changed. I have grown up and lived over two years (11 months in France September 2010 - July 2011 and Cambodia since July 2012) abroad. I have watched the disastrous reign of Bush and partied in the streets when Obama was elected. I have read and ignored and generally pretended I know nothing of the country where I grew up and still holds my citizenship.

As I have mentioned, I do not much like politics, anywhere in the world, and especially these days. But I have to say that I have been utterly and completely disgusted by the recent political situation in America.

I knew it was a mess before, with the Republicans heading down a dangerous fundamentalist path and flatly refusing to negotiate anything that even so much as hints against their own agenda, and the liberals flatly refusing the same thing (though I tend to agree with the liberal agenda much more often than the Republicans, I have been quite dismayed by both party's complete unwillingness to even consider listening to each other.) I did not agree with Obama's hardline on Syria. I do not like the US foreign policy period.

Let me put it this way: that the Republicans have shut down the government because they didn't get their way is a disgrace to democracy.

But it's more than that.

This is personal.

I have watched my father struggle with the healthcare system over the course of and continuing over two serious accidents. I have heard of how my deathly ill sister was refused at a number of clinics because she had no insurance, and my financially struggling sister ready to spend 300 dollars out of pocket -- no small change -- simply to get someone to look at her.

My sister Darcy ended up in the hospital for two and a half months while my family struggled daily with social workers to figure out how to get her the care she needed.

And now, here we are. Maybe it is expensive, maybe the system will be flawed, but in Obamacare I saw an opportunity for me and my family - none of us with health insurance, no way to afford it, and all sorts of reasons why companies would deny us -- to get valuable coverage.

But because some blowhards have decided they disagree and are completely unwilling to negotiate or even consider that the system now may be broken -- and it is, I assure you, broken -- the government is shut down, and the whole country is suffering. I see no end in sight or even any sign that anybody would rather have a functioning government over getting their way.

No.

I am not proud to be an American. Not anymore, and not now.

Cambodia is going to be fine

The longer I stay in Cambodia, the more I understand about what it is to live here, especially in the energy. I believe whole-heartedly in ghosts, because energy is powerful. Walls, rocks, places, hold energies and history, and I think that at some times there is such a flash of energy that it remains -- perhaps why violent deaths sometimes result in ghost sightings and stories.

There is an energy in Cambodia, and I didn't really even understand that until a friend and I were talking about it. She was in Thailand for a week and said now she thinks it's important to get out of the country at least once every few months because the energy here is heavy.

She's right -- there is a heavy energy here. Going to Sihanoukville or the islands, while relaxing, doesn't cut it, because it's still Cambodia and it still carries the weight of the genocide.

At the immigration office we're working on a separated family case, and between the sisters who have grown up in America and the sister left in Cambodia (born some years before the Khmer Rouge), the difference in their faces and eyes are incredibly striking. The one in Cambodia has years and  years of care and worry and hard work etched into her face, very little education and far too much hurt for her time. Those in America have wide, lively eyes and smooth foreheads.

Sometimes it gets frustrating -- actually, a lot. Corruption has been built into this country's government from the beginning and it is so entrenched now that it's hard to see even the start of the path out. Poverty and corruption are institutions and it affects all daily life. With the recent political stalemates, it highlights the problem even more.

One of my friends said it best -- more often than not, instead of being the "Kingdom of Wonder", Cambodia is the "Kingdom of Wondering What The Hell is Going On."

And yet.

Today I went to go see the circus. If you believe the internet, there is no circus school in Phnom Penh, only in Battambang, but there is a circus, a program of the Royal University of Fine Arts. Circus apparently dates back to the Angkorian times as there are bas-reliefs in Angkor Wat showing people tightrope walking and juggling.

The maybe ten performers were aged somewhere between ten or twelve to maybe late teens or early twenties, all but two male, and they were good. They attacked their work with focus and determination, with all the panache, showboating, and theatricality required for circus. They were choreographed, decently rehearsed, and actually very impressive.

When I left, I had this thought: Cambodia is going to be fine. It's going to be fine because there is a whole younger generation of people who are passionate about what they do and willing to take the time to invest themselves in it.

My brain afterwards was trying to be a cynic about it, saying that the system is so skewed that all that optimism and passion could get squashed -- a very specific google search that finally admits the existence of the school is full of how it might get shut soon and how the artists are not sure if they can actually make a living doing this.

But I can never shake that feeling, whether with these young performers or other dancers and artists I've met. They are not sure, but they are passionate and willing -- so it seems at least -- to take the risk. When they talk afterwards their words are unsure, but when they are performing their eyes are on fire.

It is not now, and change is a very, very slow, ardous, and ugly process. My mind can think of a thousand ways for things to go wrong and very few for them to go right. The passion of youth to be stamped out by the status quo and the old entrenched institutions and all that.

But whatever my mind thinks, my heart sees these young artists and believes unshakeably that in their hands, Cambodia is going to be fine.

Violence is not the answer

There's been some crazy things going on in Phnom Penh. Demonstrations and protests against the total sham of free and fair elections have turned dangerous with police brutally dispersing, or unnecessarily blocking key arteries to keep people from going home, or, in the case last night, standing by as a number of masked thugs slingshot marbles and beat sticks on peaceful protesters.

I don't much like politics, and I don't really like talking about them. Any conversation descends into an us vs them dichotomy, thems is wrong and us is right. So I'm not going to say much more about it and won't spend on long this post either.

Today the new Cambodian "government" was sworn in, 68 seats of the ruling party with the opposition boycotting in protest of the unfair elections. The King was there and read some statement that mentioned none of the violence or the strange fact that half the seats remain painfully empty.

Even worse, a number of major countries -- including the US and France -- sent representatives to the farce of opening a democracy. The US Ambassador to Cambodia was there, smiling, putting a rubber stamp of approval on a government that uses corruption as a way of life and cares about power well before the needs or desires of its own people. Someone said on Twitter, and I couldn't agree more -- those who sent representatives today are a disgrace.

It's not just Cambodia, though. In my own country, the government is raring at the bit to start another war. The two parties refuse pointblank to have anything to do with each other, including discussions or, perish the thought, try some attempt at compromise. And in the meantime, America sickens -- and literally, considering the utter catastrophe of a healthcare system.

There is even a well-respected (by some) American institution with widespread membership whose explanation for the fact that thirteen people were shot in a military base is that "there weren't enough good guys with guns."

While here, armed thugs shoot people with marbles and beat them with sticks while the police passively look on, and in response to the incident, explain "they were trying to do something, but we stopped them, we didn't do anything wrong."

I will say this once, and I'm not going to change my mind: violence is not the answer. It was never the solution to begin with, and trying to stop violence with violence only perpetuates the bloody cycle. Any rhetoric, religious or political or otherwise, that ultimately leads and endorses a violent conclusion, is not the answer either.

Violence has become the rhetoric of everyday life. Hurt them before they hurt you. It's in our games, our media, our politics, our religions, and the result is a rotten fruit.

It is not the answer. Not then, not now, and will never be.

Protection from the overbearing west, or covering your eyes?: Why I'm teaching ballet here

There is an ongoing debate going on in Cambodia right now about arts and culture -- to evolve or to preserve. And on the side of evolve, there's another split as to how. They agree that it's okay to change and move forward, but as to how -- with what influences, etc -- is the question.

Essentially it all boils down to the question, how much of the west is too much? For the preservation side, any is too much, but even on the evolve side that can be true. The west has done enough. Cambodians should evolve from their own culture, and the west should stay in its own place. 

This week I found myself in the middle of this debate as a result of my decision to teach western dance history in a workshop at Cambodian Living Arts. I prefer not to say who the debate was with or how it came up, but the basic question was this: if we're encouraging contemporary Cambodian dance that is still based very much on Cambodian culture, then we should be careful about showing/exposing the dancers to too much western dance so they don't get a certain idea fixed in their head. 

Now here I have to say, I have no idea what the best way is, obviously. I have only what I think, and while I do feel pretty strongly about it, I can't say I'm right and end of discussion, as no doubt the truth is more complicated. 

But what I think is that there is nothing more important than education. There is nothing more important than being exposed to as many things as possible, ideas that challenge what you feel, what you think you believe. Personally, I've watched a lot of dance. I like maybe 10%, and I really love maybe 5%. But the more I watch, the more I understand what it is I respond to, the ideas I really appreciate. 

Now, if it were to be the sort of thing where someone comes in and says, "This is Martha Graham. This is what dance should be. The end," that would be a different story. But I can never say, this is what dance is, this is what it should be. Those ideas are constantly being challenged, and the most revered characters in dance history are those that broke the rules, that did things completely different from those that came before. 

Why is it that we westerners are allowed to steal from every other culture, and yet when it comes to Cambodians learning about the western forms, suddenly it's seen as the overbearing west? 

Isn't it true that looking at the western forms -- and any other cultural forms and dances -- that they might understand what makes Cambodian forms unique and special, and being able to really exploit those areas? 

Besides education -- learning history, context, seeing what ideas other choreographers are playing with -- what about teaching other techniques? This has been a different side of the debate in the past. I am planning, as part of my dancers' training, to teach basic ballet and basic contemporary techniques. I want to do this because I think there are certain tools of movement -- like strength, flexibility, and balance -- that ballet is really good at offering. Graham technique is excellent for core strength, another useful tool, and other techniques I've learned are really good for strengthening and learning to use the back, yet another useful tool. 

But in doing this, am I squashing the Cambodian side? Even if we never actually perform a lick of ballet onstage. Pilates might be okay, but ballet? Too western? Of course I don't know the answer to it, but I do believe that as a dancer, the more tools you have in your pocket to help you move in different ways and adjust to different styles or think of different ways to move, the better. What I know is ballet and contemporary and that's what I can teach. 

Does all of this make me a blind, overbearing westerner? 

I know that sounds like a sarcastic question, but I mean it honestly, and the answer is, I don't know. Maybe it does. But I just can't let go of the idea that it's important to know what's out there, what other people are doing and why, because I'm quite convinced that the more you understand the other, the more you understand yourself. 

It has to be done tactfully, in the sense of showing -- this is this choreographer, they were trying to do this -- and not lecturing. But there is no need to shelter these dancers. Let them look, let them learn, and let them decide for themselves what it means to be Cambodian. With the education behind them, it will be a much more informed decision. 

I don't know all the answers, but I just think that covering your eyes does not help you see.