The Graceful Struggle: Reviving Cambodia’s Apsara Dance

via Khmer Times, 26 February 2024: The Sacred Dancers of Angkor, a spiritual dance troupe based near Siem Reap’s Banteay Srei Temple, embody the resilience and beauty of Cambodia’s classical dance heritage. Founded by Ravynn Karet-Coxen, the troupe faces financial challenges yet continues to preserve the ancient art form, teaching over 4,500 gestures of the dance rooted in meditation and prayer. Despite hardships, including the impact of COVID-19, these dancers, drawn from humble backgrounds, aspire to global recognition, carrying Cambodia’s cultural legacy to international stages.

This troupe, recognised as the Kingdom’s first and only spiritual dance troupe, is not only well-known in Siem Reap but also all over Cambodia and has even performed in other countries. Since 2007, they have been taught the discipline in the ancestral Khmer way: meditation, praying and mastering more than 4,500 gestures of the dance.

The Sacred Dancers and Musicians are all trained at the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Banteay Srei at the Conservatoire NKFC Preah Ream Buppha since 2007 with the discipline of the full study of the Robam Preah Reach Troap but have been given a specific identity with the spiritual mission that they embraced in the daily practice of prayers and meditation five days a week.

One of the dancers, Yam Chariya, 25, says she never imagined that she, a country girl from a poor farming family, could have the chance to fly to the United States, Laos, and Japan to perform the classical dance on a grand stage in front of international audiences.

Source: Sacred Dancers on a thorny path to creating the authentic Apsara – Khmer Times