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Read about Sophiline Shapiro as a master Classical Cambodian Dancer in the California Folk & Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, 1999-2000.
Sophiline Cheam was born in 1967 in Phnom Penh, and had her life disrupted by the horrors of war and the Pol Pot regime. She lived for years with her family in the forests after evacuating the city. When the war ended, one of the first priorities for the nation was to reopen the national School of Fine Arts. Sophiline was one of the first students to learn from the masters of dance who had survived both the end of the court and the later violence of Pol Pot, who specially targeted artists.
Her teacher chose her to play giants and male roles (traditionally danced by women), but although Sophie excelled, her body did not grow to the size required for those roles. She made a change to study female roles, and excelled in those roles as well. It is unusual for one dancer to have been trained in all three roles. Sophiline's class of 1988 was the first to graduated from the University of Fine Arts School of Dance following the fall of Pol Pot. She thereupon joined the faculty to teach.
Besides teaching Sophiline performed with the Classical Dance Company of Cambodia at the University and throughout the country. She also toured with the company to Vietnam, India, the former Soviet Union, and the United States. She continued to teach and perform until she married an American, John Shapiro, and moved to southern California in 1991.
Almost immediately, Sophie began teaching Cambodian dance to Cambodian immigrants and performing in the Los Angeles area. She joined the efforts with other conservatory trained dancers who reside in the United States, to keep Cambodian dance and culture a part of the lives of Cambodians immigrants. In the west coast, the only trained dancers of this level of excellence are Sophiline in southern California, and her sister Charya Burt in San Francisco. This is a significant fact because the largest overseas populations of Cambodians are located in California.
In Southern California, Sophiline has grown and developed in remarkable ways. She began her own company, Danse Celeste, which is dedicated specifically to Cambodian classical dance. Since 1991 she has led countless workshops, demonstrations, and classes. For the Cambodian communities in particular, she has taught classes in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, and Long Beach. In Long Beach, where over 40,000 Cambodians, Sophie developed programs for the United Cambodian Community and the Southeast Asian Health Project of Saint Mary's Hospital. She has been a California Arts Council artist-in-residence for those projects, and has received support as well from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, California Traditional Folk Arts and the James Irvine California Folk Arts Regranting Program of Irvine Foundation, both administered by the Fund for Folk Culture.
She has also developed herself through education, receiving a Bachelor's Degree in the Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1997, where she is currently a doctoral student. In 1999 she received a grant from the Fowler Museum to conduct dissertation research in Cambodia where she will interview her teachers, all of whom were palace dancers. She also received a grant form the James Irvine Foundation to mount a production of Shakespeare's Othello performed by Cambodian dancers at her alma mater. This is not as strange as it may seem, since Sophiline has carefully researched Desdemona, Othello and other characters and parallel Cambodian characters. She respected the guidance and criticsm of her teachers and other dancers in the process of staging Othello in Cambodia, and the result carefully incorporated Shakespeare within the rigid parameters of Cambodian classical dance aesthetic.
Sophiline has presented and performed for special ceremonial occasions for the Cambodian community, symposia of dance specialists, conferences of multi-cultural arts organization grantees, audiences at concerts, public schools, and on stage before tens of thousands of Cambodians gathered in Long Beach to celebrate Cambodian New Year. Other musicians and dancers seem to enjoy working with her because of her sincere and unquestionable dedication to her own art form. In the world of Cambodian arts, respect is something that one does not earn easily. In 1998 she collaborated with extraordinary dancers of kathak, kathak-kali, bharata natyam, Thai, Javanese, and Balinese classical dance in a production of the Ramayana. The respect she engendered between all collaborators was truly remarkable.
By Terry Liu
Read about Sophiline Shapiro as a master Classical Cambodian Dancer in the California Folk & Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, 1999-2000.
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