Organization

Prumsodun Ok & NATYARASA


Prumsodun Ok & NATYARASA is a Phnom Penh dance company of gay men who perform Khmer classical dance and new works by its founder, Prumsodun Ok.[1][2] The company calls itself Cambodia's first gay dance company. Its male dancers take roles long performed by women.[1][3] Ok, a Khmer American choreographer raised in Long Beach, California, founded it in 2015.[2]

History

As a teenager, Ok studied with Sophiline Cheam Shapiro at Khmer Arts Academy in Long Beach. He first came to Cambodia in 2008 to study Khmer dance.[2][4] In 2015 he moved to Phnom Penh with a grant from a U.S.-based foundation, to develop the project Beloved and to explore sexuality in Apsara dance.[3][5][6] He stayed on after seeing that young gay Cambodians needed a role model. The company took shape in his living room, which served as its rehearsal space, and Ok has said its formation was an accident.[6][3][7] Some of the young men he recruited were wary at first, but over the following months they came to trust him and formed a community around dance.[4]

The company made its Cambodian debut in August 2016 at the Department of Performing Arts of the Ministry of Culture in Phnom Penh. The program had four short dances, two set to traditional Khmer music and two to contemporary pop.[4][5] The theater filled within five minutes of the doors opening, and spectators crowded into the aisles.[5][3] Ok received threats of violence because of the work, and campaigns calling for the company's closure came especially in its early years.[4][8]

After its debut the company performed in Cambodia, Thailand and India, including the Bangkok Theatre Festival in June 2017.[3][1] By then the founding grant had run out.[3] In 2017 it had eight dancers aged 18 to 24.[7][2] It became the dance company in residence at Counterspace, the theater of Java Creative Café in Tuol Tompung, Phnom Penh, where Vajramala: Spirit of Khmer Dance played every Saturday and Sunday evening. It also works in partnership with Khmer Arts.[1][9][10] The company has since performed in Germany and Japan and been invited to perform at the Ministry of Culture.[8][6] Ok now trains a second generation of dancers, both professional artists and young talents.[8] In 2024 the company had seven dancers.[11]

Lineage and training

The company holds a sampeah kru (prayer to the teachers) ceremony at least once a year to honor living and departed teachers. Through it, students mark their place in a lineage the company traces back more than 1,000 years. Offerings include food, flowers, incense and candles, and above all dance and music.[12] During the ceremony its dancers perform kbach bat yeak, the movement fundamentals of the yeak (demon) roles. These were taught by Soth Sam On, who danced yeak roles in the palace from the 1950s to the 1970s and was the main teacher of Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, who in turn taught Ok.[12]

The company trains young gay men in Khmer classical dance and gives its dancers full training and emotional support.[5][3] Its dancers earn a living wage, and one dancer has said the company gives them an income.[13][2]

Repertory

The company uses the vocabulary of Khmer classical dance to create works centered on LGBTQ+ characters and perspectives.[5] Some dances show love between two men, and others let a performer move between male and female roles within one sequence.[4] Some of its works change the costumes, add English lyrics and alter dance patterns, and some pair Khmer melodies with songs by the British singer Sam Smith.[7][6] The company often works with artists from other disciplines and cultures.[12]

  • Beloved, drawn from a 13th-century Cambodian ritual associated with rain, life and prosperity[7]
  • PRUM x POP, Khmer classical dance set to pop music, and Robam Santhyea Vehea, a love story between two men; both were on a Siem Reap program on July 14 and 15, 2017, with Beloved[2]
  • Vajramala: Spirit of Khmer Dance[1][10]
  • Phleng Spean Chivit, a classical dance drama of about two and a half hours adapted from the Japanese folktale Akoya-hime. A heroine falls in love with a tree spirit, who later asks her to cut down his tree so the community can build a bridge. The drama explores people's bond with nature through ideas of service, sacrifice and offering, and its first half was shown as a work in progress in 2021 after a month of rehearsals between lockdowns.[12][14]
  • Drops & Seeds, made with Ensemble KNM Berlin and presented at CTM Festival, on cycles of pain, violence and struggle on a cosmic scale[12]
  • A Deepest Blue, developed on a research trip to Koh Sdach, an island off Cambodia's southwest coast, where the dancers sang Khmer lyrics Ok had set to a Japanese gagaku (court music) melody[12]
  • A performance at the Gay Games in Hong Kong, which opened with a sung invocation to the ancestors, the spirits of land and water, the gods and the teacher spirits, followed by a new classical dance invoking the earth goddess Thorani[12]

Performances and recognition

The company has performed at festivals, universities, embassies, corporate events and community gatherings in Cambodia, Thailand and India.[1] NBC News, SBS, Khaosod English, Channel NewsAsia and The Cambodia Daily have covered its work.[1] Among reviews the company cites, the Bangkok Post called Vajramala "Radical Beauty . . . Brave but also intimate and tender."[1] The company has drawn international attention for its place in discussions of queerness and Cambodian cultural identity.[15] Some critics have accused it of breaking a centuries-old custom. Ok has said that critics saw new possibilities for the art form once they saw the quality of the dancing.[11]

Prumsodun Ok

Ok is the founding artistic director of the company and country director of Khmer Arts, where he was earlier associate artistic director.[1] He served on the board of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts and was an artist in residence at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York. He has received grants and fellowships from TED, the MAP Fund and the Surdna Foundation.[1] He is a TED Senior Fellow, and The Dots and WeTransfer named him an LGBT+ Creative Leader of Tomorrow.[14][1] In 2013 he started Children of Refugees, a program of talks and performances on the Syrian refugee crisis.[1]

Dancers

Dancers named in coverage, by year.

  • Choung Veasna and Chamroeun Dara (2017)[3]
  • Tes Sokhon (2017)[2]
  • Khuoen Chay (joined 2019)[8]
  • Seourn Chamreoun and Dy Puthik (2021)[5]
  • Chan Sory (2024)[11]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 Prumsodun Ok & NATYARASA, official site
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 VOA, Ambitious Cambodian Dance Troupe Honors Artistic Traditions in New Ways (July 2017)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 SBS Voices, The gay Cambodian men tackling discrimination with their modern take on traditional dance (June 2017)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 The Phnom Penh Post, All-male, all-gay dance troupe stages its Cambodian debut (August 2016)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Dance Magazine, Why Prumsodun Ok Founded Cambodia's First Gay Dance Company (December 2021)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 The Jakarta Post, Cambodia's first gay dance troupe upends centuries of tradition (September 2019)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Channel NewsAsia, Cambodia's ancient dance gets modern all-male makeover (November 2017)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Goethe-Institut, Between Tradition and Queer Identities: Cambodia's First Gay Dance Company
  9. ↑ The Culture Trip, Where to watch traditional dance shows in Phnom Penh (May 2018)
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Khmer Times, The endless dance
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Challenges, Au Cambodge, des danseurs gay réinventent l'art millénaire de l'Apsara (December 2024)
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 Prumsodun Ok, NATYARASA
  13. ↑ Dance/USA Fellowships to Artists, Leading With Love: Navigating Tradition and Innovation
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Inspire, Prumsodun Ok
  15. ↑ Yale Council on Southeast Asia Studies, Embodying Tradition: Khmer Classical Dance and Images of Queer Presence and Possibility (February 2022)
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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:16.