News from Cambodia

I arrived yesterday in Phnom Penh. Charley T has made it possible for me to move into an upper level three room apartment on Cambodia Living Arts street right near the riverside. Next door is Charley's apartment, and downstairs are Studio CLA (where the recording for the CD of Man Men's class was done) and Charley's family: Sarun and his wife Ratanak and their sons Apiream (18 months) and Leeak (2 weeks). The CLA offices and some classroom spaces are on this street, too. All day I can hear the sounds of children. An orphanage has moved into a large space that backs onto this street, and Charley says the upper level where our little balconies are faces the back side of the boy's open dorm area, where some 40 boys sleep at night.

Yesterday was a full day. The big news, for those of you who have been to PP and know of CLA's work, is that Kung Nai, the blind chapey player ("Ray Charles of Cambodia"), has a new house. For years, he's been living in a squatter's community in a little shack with a tin roof, not far from CLA street. The community has been progressively squeezed by development. In the past several years, Kung Nai has toured in the States (to the Smithsonian) and in England (as Peter Gabriel's guest) and in Australia, to perform, but has always returned to this little place, which is physically pretty squalid.

But he was finally made an offer to good to refuse: he's been given a 3 story free standing house (costing about $50,000) and $10,000 additional in cash. Yesterday he was holding a housewarming party--lots of food and beer and Johnny Walker up on the open 3rd floor roofed terrace. Much of his extended family was there. (He and his wife have 11 children, 10 surviving, and 33 grandchildren.) Some of his former neighbors from the squatter's village took motos out to see the place, too; it remains to be seen how this will impact them. I can only imagine that there are some very understandable jealousies, though everything yesterday was celebratory and Kung Nai himself looked exuberant.

The house is on the edge of a swampy area (which we hope won't really flood) and quite some distance from CLA house, though still in PP. How this new commute will affect Kung Nai's teaching, if at all, remains to be seen.

Charley and I couldn't stay long because there was also an evening event Charley wanted to attend and that I much enjoyed. It was a reception and screening of a new full-length documentary movie about a young Cambodian dancer who was part of the dance troupe at Wat Bo in Siem Reap and who was 'adopted' by a wealthy American woman who had connections in the dance world. She brought him to the States at age 16 and put him through an intensive crash course, one-on-one with a renowned Russian teacher, to learn ballet technique. He was admitted then to the School of the American Ballet, where he trained for several years, going to the Professional Children's School, and learning English. He now dances internationally, based mostly out of the Northwest Ballet in Seattle, a very reputable company. He's been back to Cambodia to perform (at the opening of the American embassy when it moved into its new headquarters) and to visit the current students at Wat Bo.

The movie was directed by the woman who made all this possible, Anne Bass. She was also there. The screening was at the Centre du Culture Francais, in a lovely space, and the audience seemed to include many of the (Western) people who are in leadership roles with various cultural organizations in PP, and many Khmer dignitaries who work with the arts. Charley does know most everyone, of course, and there was also much talk of CLA's recent splash with the opera, Where Elephants Weep.

This morning we held the first planning session for the work I've been asked to facilitate, starting to plan for the big Mahoasrop (or National Youth Performing Arts Festival) which CLA plans to host in PP in summer 2010. Today I just worked with core staff, trying to elicit everyone's visions about what they want this to be. There's a terrific amount of work to be done, and some of it--like finding a location in PP where 500 students/guests might stay and multiple workshop rooms and a performing space that could hold everyone, ideally in walking distance of one another--I can't really do. But I'll try to do enough to make my presence worthwhile as more than just a catalyst to start the planning process, which it certainly is!

Tomorrow morning I meet my Khmer (Cambodian language) teacher for the first time. So, for now, it's back to the flash cards I've been making. I seem to forget an awful lot between trips. My hope is that if I can get much of the essential stuff down on flash cards I can review it on the LONG plane ride when I come back to Cambodia again this summer with students. Wish me luck!

Karen