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.

Autorentext
Dr Amanda Rogers is an Associate Professor in Human Geography and the Geohumanities at Swansea University, UK, and author of Performing Asian Transnationalisms: Theatre, identity and the geographies of performance (2015).

Klappentext

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.

Inhalt

Introduction: Choreographing Cambodia

Chapter 1: Structures and Sutras of the Dance World

Chapter 2: Touching the Past in the Present

Chapter 3: Disability and Choreopolitics

Chapter 4: An Intimate Geopolitics of Strength: Gender and Sexuality

Chapter 5: Choreographic Conversations: Everyday Social Worlds

Chapter 6: Staging the Nation: Seasons of Nationality

Chapter 7: Experimental Screen Worlds

Chapter 8: Dance and Post-conflict Securitization

Conclusion: New Horizons of Expression: Arts for Future