Amrita Performing Arts


Amrita Performing Arts was a performing arts organization in Phnom Penh, founded in 2003, that produces Cambodian traditional and contemporary dance and theater.[1][2] It was an international nongovernmental organization (NGO) with United States nonprofit status, founded by the American theater practitioner Fred Frumberg.[3][2] Its founding mission was to help revive and preserve Cambodia's traditional performing arts, with an emphasis on training Cambodians in production management.[1][4] In 2017 its executive director, Rithisal Kang, said Amrita was widely recognized in Cambodia as a pioneer of Cambodian contemporary dance, and the organization describes itself the same way.[1][2] It closed in 2019 after about 15 years of work.[5]

This listing is retained for historical reference and is not current visitor guidance. Retirement from the directory does not by itself establish closure.

History

Before he came to Cambodia, Fred Frumberg worked at opera houses and theaters in the United States with directors including Peter Sellars. He first visited Cambodia in 1997 as a performing arts consultant for UNESCO.[3] Cambodian performances at the time had gaps in technical and administrative work such as lighting, sound and stage management, and his background in production management addressed them.[3] Funding he secured from the Rockefeller Foundation made it possible to set up Amrita. It was founded in July 2003 and opened its office in Cambodia that year.[4][3] It works in cooperation with the Royal University of Fine Arts, the Secondary School of Fine Arts and the Department of Performing Arts of the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, under a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts.[3]

In its first years Amrita mounted only traditional productions, mainly of dance. It produced works by the Department of Performing Arts, the Royal University of Fine Arts and others, including circus productions, and it hired venues and raised funds for them. It also supported Cambodian artists' own productions and toured some with as many as 40 members.[1][3] One of these was Weyreap's Battle, a work of Lakhaon Kaol, the traditional masked dance drama based on the Ramayana. The Department of Performing Arts and the Royal University of Fine Arts mounted it, and Amrita produced it. It joined the regional styles of Phnom Penh, Wat Svay Andet and Battambang in one production of more than 40 performers.[6] It played at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand in 2005, at the Melbourne International Arts Festival in Australia in 2006 and at the Barbican Centre in London in 2007.[6] After five years, the Rockefeller Foundation stopped funding culture in Southeast Asia, which ended its support for Amrita's main administrative costs.[4]

Contemporary work began early. In 2004 Amrita sent Sam Sathya, Hun Pen and Suon Bun Rith to observe the seventh Indonesian Dance Festival, where Hun Pen made her first contemporary solo, and it has been a close partner of the festival since then.[7] Its first contemporary piece, planned in 2004 with the Thai choreographer Pichet Klunchun and created in 2005, was Revitalizing Monkeys and Giants. Amrita counts it as its first collaboration with an international choreographer, and the work was shown at the opening of the Singapore Art Museum in 2006.[3] In 2006 Frumberg, then director of Amrita, brought the dancer Sopheap to the Indonesian Dance Festival's choreography workshop.[7]

Several years after its founding, Amrita's mission shifted toward contemporary theater and dance. It made the change in response to the creative drive of young Cambodian artists. Rithisal Kang later said it met doubts at first, but that growing audiences, especially younger people, came to embrace it.[1][6] The company presented Khmeropédies at the World Dance Alliance conference in New Delhi.[4] It also produced Khmeropedies II, a work by the French-Cambodian choreographer Emmanuèle Phuon, performed by Chey Chankethya, Chumvan Sodhachivy, Phon Sopheap and Sam Sathya.[8]

In 2010 Amrita produced Breaking the Silence, a play directed by the Dutch theater practitioner Annemarie Prins in which actors performed memories of life under the Khmer Rouge. Its team worked with the Documentation Center of Cambodia to interview survivors in the provinces, and those interviews became the seven short stories of the play.[9] The play toured Cambodian provinces during 2010 on a mobile theater built to take it outside the capital, and it was performed at the Esplanade Theatre Studio in Singapore on September 9, 2010.[9]

At the 2012 Indonesian Dance Festival, Rithisal Kang brought young Cambodian dancers to perform CRACK, a work by Arco Renz featuring Chey Chankethya.[7] That year Amrita's dancers also created Para-Human with Eko Supriyanto, a work commissioned by Singapore's National Museum.[7] By 2013 Amrita was turning its focus to developing Cambodian choreographers through its Contemporary Dance Platform.[7] In February 2015 its dance company had 15 dancers, some of them members of the Department of Performing Arts, and the company was not full-time. Amrita planned to define itself more clearly as a contemporary dance company under a new artistic director.[10] In 2017 it ran its second production management course, supported by a European Union grant through Cambodian Living Arts.[1]

Programs

The dance company is the core of Amrita's work. Its contemporary works are made with dancers trained in traditional forms, and they are developed with international directors and choreographers through intensive workshops.[10][2] Choreographers who have led workshops include Arco Renz of Belgium, Eko Supriyanto of Indonesia, the Khmer-French choreographer Emmanuèle Phuon and Peter Chin of Toronto, who has worked with Amrita as a guest choreographer.[4][11][2]

Amrita sends young Cambodian artists to workshops, meetings, master classes and showcases in Southeast Asia, such as the Surabaya Young Choreographers Workshop and the World Dance Alliance annual meeting.[3] The dancers Chey Chankethya and Chumvan Sodhachivy took part in ASEF's "Pointe to Point" program in Japan and Poland, and Chumvan Sodhachivy performed in Warsaw in December 2006.[4] With Cambodian Living Arts, Amrita has worked with local schools to offer dance classes, and it invites advisers from abroad to share their skills in choreography and dramaturgy, the craft of shaping a work's story and structure.[11]

Other groups often ask Amrita for help when they produce shows, tour or organize festivals, and it shares its production management knowledge with them. That work earns income that supports the dance company, while its main funding comes from the United States and other countries.[10] Amrita does not produce government events; it aims to offer shows to the general public.[3]

Audience

When Amrita began presenting contemporary work, much of its audience was made up of foreigners living in Cambodia. By February 2015, more than half of the audience was Cambodian, especially young people.[10] When Amrita invited the minister of culture to a platform of three new works, she came.[10]

People

  • Fred Frumberg, founder; named as director and artistic director[4][11]
  • Rithisal Kang (Kang Rithisal), executive director (2017)[1][3]
  • Peter Chin, guest choreographer[4]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 The Theatre Times, In conversation with Rithisal Kang (2017)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Cooperation Committee for Cambodia, NGO database: Amrita Performing Arts
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 Japan Foundation Asia Center, Asia Hundreds: Kang Rithisal (2020)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 ASEF culture360, Cambodian contemporary dance: Amrita Performing Arts
  5. ↑ Phare Ponleu Selpak, Facebook post on the closing of Amrita Performing Arts
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Khmer Times, Same, same but different?
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Amrita Performing Arts blog, A contemporary dance platform (2013)
  8. ↑ The Cambodia Daily, Dancing across history, but never skirting the issues
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Academia.edu, Witnessing Otherness: Shaping Ethical Visioning in Applied Theatre Research (2011)
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 Japan Foundation Asia Center, Extending the Frontiers of Cambodian Performing Arts through Contemporary Dance (2015)
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 ASEF culture360, By People / In Cities: Phnom Penh city profile (2017)
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This page was last edited on 27 September 2026, at 07:20.