but a Mamet moran or the art of
classical dance is more than a thousand
years old it was developed as a prayer
and movement for rain and fertility and
a prosperity that this meant for an
agricultural society dancers who are
both men and women were offered to
temples where they served as living
bridges between heaven and earth they're
dancing bodies carried the prayers of
the people up to the gods and the will
of the deities was delivered back
through them to the people in the land
there are a lot of curves in my dance
our backs are arched our knees are bent
our toes are curled or our elbows are
hyper flexed and our fingers are curved
backwards all of these curves create a
serpentine impression and this is
important because before the
introduction of major religions come
eyes and people all over the world
practiced animism serpents were
especially important in this belief
system because in their fluid
curvilinear movement they mimicked the
flow of water so to invoke the serpent
in your dancing body then was to conjure
the image of rivers cutting across the
earth inspire the flow of life-giving
waters as you can see then my classical
dance is a transformation of nature of
both the physical world around us and of
our own internal universe we have four
primary hand gestures that we use can we
do them together yeah okay
this is a tree
that tree will grow and then it will
have leaves after it has leaves it'll
have flowers and after it has flowers
it'll have fruit that fruit will drop
and a new tree will grow and in those
four gestures are the cycle of life
these four gestures are then used to
create a whole entire language with
which dancers express ourselves so for
example I can say I I in dance that
would be I or I can say hey you come
here come here in dance come here or go
go go and everything from love
to sadness to anger can be expressed
through the dance as well there's a
certain magic in the way that things are
filtered transformed and put together to
create limitless possibilities in art
the kamae word for art celibate in fact
at its root means magic the artist the
xalapa or the xalapa Adam II then is
nothing short of a magician I am very
proud to say that I belong to a long
line of magicians from my teacher
soclean chin Shapiro to her teachers who
were stars in royal palace to the
ancient dancers of uncle and to the
primal villagers from which the art form
originally took life that said our
cherished heritage was once almost
completely destroyed if you are wearing
glasses please stand up
if you speak more than one language
please stand up if you have light skin
please stand up
your glasses meant that you could afford
health care that's second or third
language you spoke indicated your elite
education your light-skinned meant you
didn't have to work beneath the Sun
under the Khmer Rouge who took over
Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 we would all
be dead now
targeted because of our assumed
privilege you see the Khmer would look
to Cambodia and they saw centuries of
rigid inequality the king and a few
elites around him had all the pleasures
and comforts of the world while the mass
majority suffered from back-breaking
labor and harsh poverty you don't need a
history book to see that this is true
the kamae word for I for me is come this
very same word can also mean slave and
dancers were in fact were known as
comparative mam or slaves of the sacred
dance the Khmer Rouge sought to end
slavery in Cambodia yet somehow they
turned everyone into slaves to do it
they became the oppression that they
sought to end they evacuated the capital
and forced people into labour camps they
tore families apart and brainwashed
children against their own parents
everywhere people were dying and being
killed losing their lives from disease
overwork execution and starvation the
result of this is that an entire third
of Cambodia's population was lost in
less than four years and in that number
were 90% of Kamiya dance artists in
other words nine out of ten visions for
the tradition and future were lost
thankfully however it was my teachers
teachers Jia semi suit saman and Chang
pawn who would lead the revival of the
art form
the ashes of war and genocide one
student one gesture one dance at a time
they wrote the love magic beauty history
and philosophy of our lineage into the
bodies of the next generation nearly
forty years later
Kamiya classical dance has been revived
to new heights yet somehow it still
exists in a ver noble environment the
disastrous effects of war still haunt my
people today it is written in our bodies
manifested in a genetic passage of PTSD
and in families facing cyclical poverty
and immense cultural risks and language
barriers yet beauty is a most resilient
thing Beauty has this ability to grow
anywhere and everywhere at any time
beauty is what connects people through
time and place beauty is a liberation
from suffering as Kamiya artists work to
revive our culture and country we find
that there are many paths in which to
move forward into the future and in a
tradition where we often don't know the
dancers names who they were what their
lives were like what they felt let me
propose that we move forward honestly
and openly from kim kiyul not as in
slave but as in conscious service kim i
me flowering my name is Brom Soren alch
I am kamae and I am American I am the
child of refugees a creator a healer and
a builder of bridges I am my teachers
first male student in a tradition
understood by many as female and I found
it
Cambodia's first gay dance company I am
the incarnation of the
Beauty dreams and power of those who
came before me the convergence of past
present and future and of individual and
collective let me then play that ancient
an ageless role of the artist as
messenger by sharing the words of King
upon a garden with only one type of
flower or flowers of only one color is
no good this is a reminder that our
strength growth survival and very
existence lies in diversity it is
however a message of courage as well for
a flower does not ask for anyone's
permission to bloom it was born to offer
itself to the world
fearless love is its nature thank you
[Applause]
[Music]