Transnational cultural exchange
Hsu and Lin aren’t the only ones engaging with Cambodian culture.
The National Taiwan College of Performing Arts (NTCPA) invited Danny Yung to direct and host The Interrupted Dream · Monkey Business, an attempt to engage traditional performing arts in transregional, cross-cultural dialogue and cooperation that was staged in Taiwan and Hong Kong in October 2018. In one dance segment, called “Heavenly Palace of Monkey Business,” the Cambodian dancer Nget Rady, who specializes in playing the monkey role in traditional Khmer mask-drama dance, and Chang Yu-chau, who specializes in the Monkey King role in Peking Opera, demonstrated aspects of classical Cambodian dance and Peking Opera to show students the core and innovations of each traditional dance form.
Rady has performed his wild yet graceful style of dance several times in Taiwan. At the November event, he focused on teaching NTCPA students how to dance the monkey role, in the hope that exploring physical movements and practicing sounds would boost the students’ confidence on stage.
He says: “Even though Taiwan and Cambodia have different political systems and social backgrounds, music and the arts can bridge the differences and connect people.”
Meanwhile, Rotary Taipei Asia Link and a Cambodian group called Artisans Angkor jointly organized the “Art Creation Program.” Under the program, Asia Link donated US$6,000 to help fund a Formosa Budding Hope Association program that pays fine arts teachers from Artisans Angkor to provide drawing classes to impoverished children. The groups also arranged a joint charity bazaar in Taiwan in mid-November.
Artisans Angkor is a non-governmental organization founded in 1992 with funds from the French government. Vidana Kernem, the group’s secretary-general, says that it runs job training workshops in sculpture and silk weaving that teach traditional arts and handicrafts to unemployed 18-to-25-year-old Cambodians with limited educations. The organization also provides job opportunities.
“The training program uses local stone and preserves traditional Khmer crafts. Students incorporate modern designs, colors, and quality controls into their work, giving the traditional craft a modern makeover, and producing top-flight results,” says Kernem.
Artisans Angkor is also involved in the renovation of Angkor Wat, demonstrating how Cambodia is using modern and innovative methods, and job training for the poor, to revitalize traditional Khmer arts and crafts. Perhaps with time Cambodia’s germinating cultural revival and self-awareness will enable its civilization to regain the heights it once knew.
Lin Chih Yu (back row, third from right) poses with Amrita Performing Arts, a Cambodian modern dance company with which she did a performance internship. (courtesy of Lin Chih Yu)
These Cambodian children are using their after-school hours to practice dances performed during traditional festivals.
Artisans Angkor helps unemployed young people learn traditional arts and crafts, such as sculpture, and provides them with employment opportunities.
Artisans Angkor helps unemployed young people learn traditional arts and crafts, such as sculpture, and provides them with employment opportunities.
Ultimately, only education can end the cycle of poverty that the civil war began and help the poorest stand on their own feet. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)