Choreographing Cambodia : Geopolitics, Nation & Identity in Contemporary Dance

Choreographing Cambodia is an open-access interdisciplinary exploration of the connections between geopolitics, embodiment, and post-conflict cultural aesthetics, engaged with through 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 intervene in, and be shaped by, geopolitical forces. As such, the book examines how contemporary dance offers new insights into the entanglement of geopolitics, choreography and identity, whilst also representing the first sustained analysis of contemporary dance in Cambodia.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by UKRI.