Article By Alexandria Shealy, Arts Editor

The Daily Tar Heel (Newspaper of the University of North Carolina)

www.dailytarheel.com

Sophiline Cheam Shapiro has come a long way from her days working in a field collecting cow dung in rural Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime. Now as the artistic director of the Khmer Arts Academy - a dance troupe specializing in Cambodian classical dance - Shapiro has travelled around the world both as a performer in other groups and as the head of her own company.

"Pamina Devi : A Cambodian Magic Flute" the company's classical dance rendition of Mozart's famed opera choreographed by Shapiro, will be performed at 8 pm today in the Memorial Hall of the University of North Carolina. It is presented in Khmer, Cambodia's national language, with English subtitles. While the performance includes the same characters and premise of the original opera, Shapiro incorporated into the dance her own experiences during the frequent transfer of political power in Cambodia. "The characters forget to provide the environment, the warmth and the nurture to Pamina Devi," Shapiro said. "This is reflecting through my own experience through the changing political system in Cambodia."

Shapiro, who incorporated the academy in 2001, said that while she didn't think she could be as expressive as Mozart, she was willing to try when renowned American theatre director Peter Sellars came up with the idea for "Pamina Devi." "With this work, people both in Cambodia and in international audiences appreciate it," Shapiro said. "It is a new production, and the costume is beautiful, and it represents both the preservation of the classical dance even though I choreograph new movements; it's still in the same frame of work."

Classical Cambodian dance takes dancers more than nine years of training to become qualified to perform. The form is traditionally a court dance that has been performed for the country's royalty for thousands of years. Dancers perform by bending back their limbs to express characters' emotions while wearing golden outfits that must be sewn onto the body. One of the reasons Emil Kang, UNC's executive director for the arts, chose "Pamina Devi" for performance was for its ability to teach audiences about Cambodia. "In any of these performances that are avant garde or international, all we're asking is that it gets you curious," he said. "I think many students don't know about Pol Pot or the Khmer Rouge, and these are important things to learn."

As far as the story of "The Magic Flute" - a classical German opera - being relayed by gold-clad Cambodian dancers goes, Kang said if something is lost in the translation, it's hardly worth the mention. "The story itself is well and good and the idea of gender it explores - all of those things are very important," he said, "but I think just to be able to experience the classical dance form is even more important and also this idea that the arts can help with cultural exchange." Kong Bonich, who plays Tamino, said classical dance has the power to transform the dancer. "The costume is tight, but it creates a sense of elegance," she said. "I feel beautiful when I dance in this movement. When you move, you feel a difference between the dance and the ordinary me."

While Shapiro said she hopes people find a connection to Cambodian history through her dance, she said there is much to appreciate just in the story itself. "If you don't connect it into Cambodian history, I hope you connect to Pamina Devi as a person," she said, "whether you see it in a greater perspective or in the Cambodian context or you see just a person who is trying to survive in this world."