Dance in Cambodia.(Review)

Dance in Cambodia. By Toni Samantha Phim and Ashley Thompson. (Images of Asia.) Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia: Oxford University Press, 1999. [xii, 91 p. ISBN 983-56-0059-7. $19.95.]

Part of a series on Southeast Asia now numbering thirty-one volumes, this modest but expertly written work contributes greatly to our rather limited knowledge of Cambodian dance and theater and their current practice. Intended for a general audience, its style is entirely descriptive, and it includes forty-two black-and-white drawings and photographs and twenty-three color plates. In addition to the five chapters, there is a brief introduction to Cambodian music and a glossary. The authors write with authority based on extensive fieldwork in Cambodia during the nineties and, I suspect, based on personal study of dance as well.

The book is organized into chapters that, following an introduction (chap. 1), cover four genres: shadow theater, court (classical) dance, all-male dance drama, and ceremonial or theatrical dance. The authors approach the subject from historical and contextual perspectives, with relatively little space devoted to technical descriptions. While they are clearly dance specialists, they communicate a broad knowledge of Cambodian history, culture, and other arts, enabling the reader to understand these genres as expressions of Cambodian culture as a whole.

For Cambodians, dance is not merely entertainment or exercise; it is essential to life and to the identity and maintenance of Cambodian culture. That is why so many Cambodians, even many of common origin, sought to learn dance in the refugee camps in Thailand following the disastrous reign of terror of the Khmer Rouge (1975-79), whose systematic abuse and killing, targeted at educated and artistic persons, caused the deaths of some two million fellow Khmers. In the ...