Organization

Royal Ballet of Cambodia


The Royal Ballet of Cambodia is the troupe that performs Cambodian classical dance for the Cambodian state, in Phnom Penh and on tours abroad.[1][2] The same name is used for the dance tradition itself, which UNESCO recognized in 2003, and it can also refer to the National Dance Company of Cambodia.[1][3] Its dancers come from the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts and its Department of Performing Arts, the Secondary School of Fine Arts and the Royal University of Fine Arts.[4]

This page is about the performing troupe. For the dance tradition, see Cambodian classical dance.


History

The royal dance was long kept under the patronage of the king and the royal family, and it was once performed only for royalty and important guests.[5] It had traditionally performed only at ceremonies inside Cambodia. It first traveled abroad in 1906, in the court of King Sisowath, and danced before a French audience.[6] Queen Sisowath Kossamak, Princess Norodom Buppha Devi's grandmother, is widely credited with reviving the ballet around the turn of the twentieth century and adapting its works.[7] After independence in 1953 she created new ballets and a new way of staging the dance for audiences at home and abroad, and the Royal Ballet became a symbol of the Cambodian nation.[6]

In 1958, when China and Cambodia established diplomatic relations, the Royal Ballet visited China for the first time, at the invitation of Premier Zhou Enlai. It has returned to China many times since.[2] In the 1960s and early 1970s its principal dancers, among them Menh Kossony and Pen Sokhuon, performed in many countries.[8] Peou Khatna, who later directed the Khmer Classical Dance Troupe in exile, danced with the Royal Ballet in the United States in 1971.[9] The fall of Prince Sihanouk halted the troupe's work.[9]

Under the Khmer Rouge the Royal Ballet nearly ceased to exist, and the Khmer Rouge eliminated almost all of its master dancers and musicians.[3] Before the war it had nearly 300 dancers, musicians and singers. Princess Buppha Devi later said that 40 dancers survived.[5] During the Pol Pot years she taught children in the refugee camps on the Thai border.[7] After the 1979 Vietnamese invasion, surviving teachers and dancers formed the Khmer Classical Dance Troupe in the camps.[9]

Dance troupes re-formed and performances resumed soon after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979.[3] The Royal University of Fine Arts set up a repertory and training program for dancers and musicians under the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts.[10] From its re-founding in 1980, the Arts Department of the Ministry of Culture built a professional dance and theater company of about 300 members that toured across Cambodia and beyond.[11]

In 1991 King Norodom Sihanouk and Princess Norodom Buppha Devi returned to Cambodia for good. Surviving former dancers and new dancers staged a performance to welcome the king home, and it was the princess's last time dancing.[7] The Center for Khmer Studies dates her re-founding of the Royal Ballet to 1993.[8] She led its revival as its director, served as Minister of Culture and Fine Arts, and took the troupe to New York, France, China, India and Southeast Asia.[7][4][5] Her first duty, she said, was to revive, film and record the classical dance for future generations.[5]

UNESCO proclaimed the Royal Ballet of Cambodia a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity on November 7, 2003. It was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008.[10][3] In 2005 the ministry and a working group, with the UNESCO office in Phnom Penh and support from a UNESCO/Japanese fund, began an Action Plan for Safeguarding the Royal Ballet.[10] From 2006 Hun Pen coordinated the Royal Ballet Project for the ministry and UNESCO. She later became deputy director of the Department of Performing Arts.[12][8]

Princess Buppha Devi died in 2019. Khmer royal dancers did not perform in France again until 2025. The troupe has also toured ASEAN countries and China to promote Khmer culture.[4]

Company and training

The Royal Ballet chooses some of its dancers from graduates of the Royal University of Fine Arts, which takes students from the Secondary School of Fine Arts.[7] The university and the ministry's arts department often share staff and work together on projects and tours. Some dancers teach at the university and the Secondary School of Fine Arts, and the Department of Performing Arts engages dancers to perform on state visits.[13][1]

Students begin training at about six to nine years old, and young women learn nearly 300 gestures. Dancers with a petite build usually train for female roles, and taller, slim dancers for male roles. The art is passed on by oral teaching.[5] The repertory has four main characters, the woman (neang), the man (neayrong), the giant (yeak) and the monkey (sva), and its scenes come from folklore, myths and above all the Reamker, the Cambodian version of the Ramayana.[3][7] A pin peat orchestra and a female chorus accompany the dancers.[3]

Under Princess Buppha Devi, the company rehearsed in her apartment in Phnom Penh. At that time dancers usually held day jobs as civil servants. The company had once toured abroad with the head of state, but its foreign tours were no longer paid for by the state.[7]

Tours

Tours by the troupe include the following. For the 1990 and 2001 United States tours by the university's dance company, see Royal University of Fine Arts.

  • 1906: France, in the court of King Sisowath, its first journey abroad[6]
  • 1958: a first visit to China, at the invitation of Premier Zhou Enlai[2]
  • 1971: performances in the United States, with Peou Khatna among the dancers[9]
  • 1990: a tour of the United Kingdom by the Cambodian National Dance Company, which grew out of Oxfam UK's Kampuchea Campaign[14]
  • 2017: two nights, August 25 and 26, at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, with 14 dancers, five musicians and three singers[5]
  • 2025: Le Ballet royal du Cambodge in France, with 22 artists at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris on March 8 and 9, the Opéra National de Bordeaux on March 11 and the Arsenal de Metz on March 13. The program of more than 80 minutes included six classical dances, among them the Apsara dance, Moni Mekhala and Ream Eyso, Pka Meas Pka Prak and Tep Monorom.[4][15]
  • 2025: a 37-member troupe at the seventh China Xinjiang International Folk Dance Festival in Urumqi, performing on July 28 and 29[2]

People

People named in connection with the troupe.

  • Norodom Buppha Devi, director, who revived the Royal Ballet after the Khmer Rouge period[4][5]
  • Queen Sisowath Kossamak, credited with reviving the ballet in the early twentieth century[7]
  • Menh Kossony and Pen Sokhuon, principal dancers in the 1960s and early 1970s; Pen Sokhuon later became chief dance master for male roles[8]
  • Sam Sathya, principal dancer in the 1990s and 2000s[8]
  • Chap Chamroeun Tola, prima ballerina at the time of the Hong Kong debut, whose program included a lakhon khol (masked dance) sequence[7]
  • Phoeurng Sackona, Minister of Culture and Fine Arts, who led the 2025 France tour, accompanied by Princess Norodom Arunrasmy and Mao Chamnan, president of the Khmer Artists Association[15]
  • Lundi Sannara, secretary of state at the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, who led the 2025 Xinjiang troupe[2]
  • Proeung Chhieng, artistic director of the 2001 United States tour by the Royal University of Fine Arts, who led tours with Princess Buppha Devi to many countries[13][8]
  • Hun Pen, coordinator of the Royal Ballet Project for the ministry and UNESCO from 2006 and later deputy director of the Department of Performing Arts[12][8]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Wikipedia, Royal Ballet of Cambodia
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 People's Daily and Xinhua, Cambodia's Royal Ballet to perform at folk dance festival in Xinjiang (July 2025)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, Royal ballet of Cambodia
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Cambodianess, Royal dance returns to France (March 2025)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Time Out Hong Kong, Princess Norodom Buppha Devi on the Royal Ballet of Cambodia (August 2017)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 National Museum of Cambodia, Royal Ballet: Then and Now
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 The Nation (Thailand) and The Phnom Penh Post, Inside Cambodia's royal ballet
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 Center for Khmer Studies, Archive and documentation of Cambodian dance panel (2021)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 National Endowment for the Arts, Peou Khatna
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 UNESCO ICHCAP, The Intangible Heritage List of UNESCO: Cambodia (2009)
  11. ↑ Real World Records, Musicians of the National Dance Company of Cambodia
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Chulalongkorn University, Hun Pen, The Revival of Cambodian Classical Dance after 1979 (2008)
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Asia Society, Dance: the Spirit of Cambodia program notes (2001)
  14. ↑ Swansea University, Dancers as Diplomats? The 1990 Cambodian National Dance Company tour to the UK
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Xinhua, Cambodia's Royal Ballet captivates audiences in Paris (March 2025)

Sources

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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:16.