When photojournalist Christophe Loviny arrived in Cambodia in 1988, little was left of the country he had heard of from people who lived here before the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975. “Beauty had disappeared,” he said.
And yet, since the Vietnamese forces had ousted Pol Pot in 1979, Cambodians had tried to restore some normalcy in the country. Dance and music had returned with the help of the few artists who had survived.
Loviny went about compiling photo archives of the time. “Instead of documenting Cambodia’s tragedy, I decided to document its cultural renaissance,” he said.
He chose to represent this through traditional dance because “dance is at the heart of Cambodia’s identity,” he said.
His project expanded into a photo history of Cambodia through dance. His book “Les danseuses sacrees d’Angkor,” or sacred dancers of Angkor, was published in 2002 by Seuil Jazz Editions in Paris. The Khmer version, titled “Tep Apsar Ney Angkor,” was published by the NGO Sipar and officially launched last month.
Similar in content, the French and Khmer versions are large, hardcover books with color photos printed on heavy, glossy paper. The photo of a Royal Ballet dancer from the 1900s appears on the cover of the French book.
But, for the Khmer version, Loviny picked the photo of a Royal Ballet dancer he had taken at Angkor Wat, and which, he said, reflects the theme of the book. Photographed on the temple’s third and highest level with the top of trees in the background, dancer Ouk Phalla appears as though about to take flight, kneeling in a classic position near the sculpture of two apsaras on a column.
Loviny’s photos of dance classes at the Royal University of Fine Arts, scenes from the Tep Monorom ballet, and dancers at Angkor’s temples are mixed with historical ones Loviny obtained from research institutions and private collectors in France and Cambodia.
There is the photo of a rehearsal at the Royal Palace in 1921 and of Princess Buppha Devi performing in Paris in 1964.
Proeung Chhieng is also featured rehearsing in the 1960s; now dean of the Faculty of Choreographic Arts, he was one of the first male dancers to perform Hanuman when Queen Kossamak, the mother of retired King Norodom Sihanouk, put an end to the all-female Royal Ballet tradition and allowed men to play monkey roles.
Illustrations in the book also include sketches by Auguste Rodin. The French sculptor fell in love with the dancers during a performance of the Royal Ballet in Paris in 1906, and drew them as flowing figures in muted colors. King Sisowath had come to France in 1906 for the Colonial Exhibition of Marseilles with 42 dancers, 12 musicians and eight singers in his suite.
The book was translated to Khmer by Khieu Kanharith, Minister of Information, whom Loviny knew when the minister was editor in chief of the weekly publication Kampuchea, he said.
Texts consist of historical documents and researchers’ essays. The chapter on Westerners’ first encounters with Angkor contains a text of Diogo do Couto, a Portuguese Capuchin friar who visited the site around 1585. He calls Angkor Wat’s design “so strange that it cannot be described with a pen nor can it be compared with any other monument in the world.”
In the first chapter of the book, Suppya Bru-Nut, an ancient Khmer researcher, recounts the day of a dancer in the reign of Jayavarman VII 800 years ago. The 15-year-old apsara, or celestial dancer as Royal Ballet dancers were called, would get up in the middle of the night, put on her ceremonial clothes, elaborate headgear and crown jewels, and join torchlight procession to the Bayon temple, where she would dance at dawn in a religious ceremony, her bare feet gliding on rose petals strewn over the stones.
A 1913 text of George Groslier, the founder of the National Museum, relates the life of dancers at the court of King Sisowath in the 1900s. “The King lives constantly surrounded by his wives and his dancers,” who played music, sang and danced for him, he wrote.
The 20 most beautiful dancers of the Royal Ballet were assigned to the King’s chambers on a four-day rotation, said Groslier. They were forbidden physical contact with men other than the King, and rarely left the palace. If one was authorized to visit her family, jealous rivals would spread rumors about her and even send spies to watch her in the hope of getting her expelled, wrote Groslier.
Sipar, which specializes in books for children and teenagers, saw this book as an opportunity to provide Cambodians with a lavishly illustrated book on one of their cultural traditions, said Sun Heng Meng Chheang, director of Sipar’s book series. “This book is the first of its kind in Khmer. Such quality books on Cambodian arts and culture usually are published in foreign languages,” he said.
The publishing of Tep Apsar Ney Angkor was sponsored by retired King Norodom Sihanouk, Sokimex and the French Cultural Center and supported by Apsara Authority, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and numerous agencies and private organizations.
