Creator
Prumsodun Ok
Cambodian American dancer and choreographer, founder of Prumsodun Ok & NATYARASA, described as Cambodia's first gay dance company.
Prumsodun Ok is a Cambodian American dancer, choreographer and teacher of Khmer classical dance.[1][2] In 2015 he founded Prumsodun Ok & NATYARASA in Phnom Penh, which he and the press describe as Cambodia's first gay dance company. Its male dancers perform the classical repertory, roles that women have traditionally danced, as well as new works.[3][4]
Early life and training
Ok was born in the United States to Cambodian refugees and grew up in Long Beach, California.[1][5] He has said that he was drawn to the dance at four, from a home video his father made of young dancers at a local temple.[1][3] He began proper training at 16, after his younger sisters started lessons, and he watched their classes for a year before he asked the teacher to take him on.[1] The teacher was Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, and he soon stood out among the students of her Khmer Arts Academy in Long Beach.[1][3] The CTM Festival describes him as her first male student.[2]
He later taught at the academy and was associate artistic director of Khmer Arts.[1][2] He also sat on the board of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts and was an artist in residence at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York.[2][5]
NATYARASA
In 2015 a grant from the MAP Fund took him to Cambodia to make Beloved, a dance for gay men. It draws on a 13th-century account of a royal rite in which the king lay each night with a naga.[1] He told Dance Magazine that about six weeks into teaching young men in Phnom Penh, he saw that they had become a company, "Cambodia's first gay dance company just formed in my living room!"[1] He stayed in Cambodia, telling the news agency AFP that young gay Cambodians needed a role model.[4]
The company's dancers are young men, and they take parts that in Khmer classical dance are usually danced by women.[3][4] Alongside the classical repertory it performs new works by Ok. By 2017 these included PRUM x POP, which runs from classical dance to pop music, Beloved, and Robam Santhyea Vehea, a story of love and marriage between two men.[3] Ok has said that he wants to show a more dignified and realistic picture of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people without being boxed in.[4] By 2019 the company had been invited to perform at Cambodia's Ministry of Culture.[4]
His performances have been staged in Cambodia, Thailand, Japan, India, Mexico, Greece and the United States. In 2020 he and NATYARASA presented Drops and Seeds at the CTM Festival in Berlin.[5][2]
Recognition
Ok has received grants and fellowships from TED, the MAP Fund and the Surdna Foundation.[2][5] He gave the keynote address at the Dance/USA annual conference in 2019.[5] In 2013 he started Children of Refugees, a program of talks and performances on the Syrian refugee crisis.[2]
References 5
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Dance Magazine, Courtney Escoyne, Why Prumsodun Ok Founded Cambodia's First Gay Dance Company in His Living Room (June 26, 2019)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 CTM Festival, Prumsodun Ok (2020)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 VOA, Manilene Ek, Ambitious Cambodian Dance Troupe Honors Artistic Traditions in New Ways (June 29, 2017)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 The Jakarta Post (AFP), Cambodia's first gay dance troupe upends centuries of tradition (September 30, 2019)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Prumsodun Ok talk (July 1, 2019)
Know something we're missing? Send a tip