Choreographing Cambodia

Choreographing Cambodia is an interdisciplinary exploration of the connections between geopolitics, embodiment, and post-conflict cultural aesthetics, engaged with via a detailed and empirically grounded analysis of contemporary dance in Cambodia. Popular imaginations of Cambodia still primarily associate the country with the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979), as war-torn and violent. However, young people under 30 who did not live through the Khmer Rouge now make up over 65% of Cambodia’s population and see their country as a modern, developed nation. This book examines the role of contemporary dance in forging these new imaginaries of Cambodia, and the entwined legacies of both war and peace on the creative desires of this young generation. It attends to the contestations and contradictions that result, and examines how contemporary dance navigates these tensions to produce an expanded socio-political field. The imaginaries and worlds that are expressed and enacted through dance, are thus shown to simultaneously intervene in, and be shaped by, geopolitical forces. As such, the book is concerned with how contemporary dance offers new insights into the entanglement of geopolitics, choreography and identity, whilst also offering the first sustained analysis of contemporary dance in Cambodia.