Royal Ballet of Cambodia: a princess brings sacred dance to the masses

Chap Chamroeuntola is alone on stage. Dressed in a long pleated skirt and tight-fitting tunic, the 29-year-old stands on her left leg, eyes downcast. Her right foot is flexed, the sole facing the ceiling, and her wrists and ankles are strung with gold bangles. Despite the challenging pose and a towering gilt headdress, she is completely still. As the music rises to a crescendo she remains motion­less. Then her eyes, heavily ringed in kohl, dart up and she looks directly at the 74-year-old woman wrapped in a pink shawl sitting in the third row.

Princess Norodom Buppha Devi, half-sister of Cambodia’s King Norodom Sihamoni, does not take her eyes off the dancer. No one in the packed Studio Theatre does. Slowly, Chap Chamroeuntola lowers her leg and turns, her arms held high, her fingers flexed against the joints. She moves as if in a trance and when six dancers join her on stage they, too, move as though under a spell. The Royal Ballet of Cambodia made its Hong Kong debut last weekend with three shows at the Cultural Centre, in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Earlier on August 24, with the second of the twin typhoons to have recently battered Hong Kong bearing down, I sit backstage with Chap Chamroeuntola. Barefoot and dressed in a simple training outfit of loose Khmer-style trousers and a fitted top, she tells me that she began studying classical ballet in 1995, when she was seven years old.

“My parents forced me to go because they were worried I was turning into a tomboy,” she confides.

Seeing her on stage it’s hard to believe she was ever anything but feminine, and she is equally graceful in her movements offstage. Chap Chamroeuntola disliked the early years of her training and the hour each morning spent bending her fingers back into the hyperextended position that is typical of classical Cambodian ballet.

“In the beginning, my teacher used a scarf to wrap around my hand and pull it back,” says the dancer.