Sophiline Cheam Shapiro '97 was among the first students to re-learn the classical dances of war-ravaged Cambodia. Now, she teaches the almost-lost art form and produces original choreography, which has been staged around the world.
Sophiline Cheam Shapiro (right) teaching Khmer Arts Ensemble dancer Pum Molyta at the Khmer Arts Theater in Takhmao, Cambodia. Photo by James Wasserman.
Khmer Arts Ensemble dancers Mot Pharan (left) and Sao Phirom in Sophiline Cheam Shapiro's Shir Ha-Shirim. Photo by Sophiline Cheam Shapiro.By Angilee Shah, Contributing Writer
UCLA Magazine
After the terrible violence of Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, the joy of dance returned to war-ravaged Cambodia. Sophiline Cheam Shapiro '97 was among the first students to re-learn the country's classical dances. Now, this National Heritage Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts is teaching the almost-lost art form in the Long Beach studio of her Khmer Arts Academy.
Cheam Shapiro's students are often the children of refugees; she hopes her students find inspiration in the arts the same way she did as a young girl who survived a terrible tragedy. "You can either run [from the past] or come back and help," she says. "I chose dance."
Cheam Shapiro is from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and at 8 years old, in 1975, she was forced to leave the city and work in the fields. It was the time of the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields of Cambodia. In four years, more than 1 million people — as many as 2.2 million by some estimates — were killed by the genocidal Communist regime. Among them were Cheam Shapiro's father and two brothers.
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