PHNOM PENH — Five young Cambodian choreographers will be performing their contemporary dances in October 2025, after months of training as part of the Chakto project, their works meant to convey messages ranging from social issues to family trauma. 

The Chakto project was launched to help Cambodians involved in cinema, book writing, dance and music develop their creativity and skills while reflecting their culture. It is supported by the Institut français du Cambodge (French Institute) in partnership with the organizations Anti-Archive, Sipar Cambodia, Cambodian Living Arts, and Kongchak Studio. 

As a part of the project, the Choreography Writing project held two workshops in February and March 2025 for senior and junior choreographers, the best works produced during the workshops to be performed publicly in October. 

The first workshop was conducted by Fouad Boussouf, a Franco-Moroccan choreographer and dancer, and involved five senior choreographers who focused on conceiving innovative dance works.  

Three of them were invited to serve as mentors during the second workshop attended by 10 junior choreographers, acting as their advisors until the end of the project. 

Then on March 21 through 23 and March 28 through 30, 10 junior choreographers took part in a 3-stage workshop given by Emmanuele Phuon. The first stage included training sessions focusing on foundation in choreography writing through class activities, assigned readings, and videos. 

The second stage on April 30 was a pitching session during which the young choreographers staged their dances to receive feedback from juries of Thailand, Taiwan and Indonesia, leading to five junior choreographers to receive a small grant to finalize their productions.

One of the grant winners was Soy Chanborey, a solo choreographer who titled his dance “Pak Din,” which means “Fine Embroidery.” As he explained, the work is a reflection of his personal life and the lives of other artists, especially the older generation whose time and efforts have been devoted to the arts. 
 

Through each of his movements, the soloist conveyed his fighting against the challenges he has been facing in his artistic career, conveying to the audience that, along this path, it is his perseverance and passion that kept him moving along. 

“As opportunities to perform fade with age, the artist's love for the arts remains undiminished,” Chanborey said. “Instead of retiring, they seek further training to become skilled costume designers for Khmer classical dances, including masked dance and beyond.”

The artistic work, which gained him recognition in the project, was dedicated to the older artists who continued to perform despite the physical and emotional challenges. 

Though their voices are silent, their faces speak thousands of words as Chanborey reflected in his work. In the name of the artists, he called on the young generation to honor these heroes whose  contribution and legacy are rooted in Cambodia’s arts. 

Diversity exists, and everyone has their own uniqueness as Kim Socheat proved. One of the winners, Socheat created a work that moved the audience. Entitled “Relationship”, the dance spoke of difficulties he has faced as a person with a leg disability, also reflecting on the lives of other artists with disability. 

Socheat’s dance tells a story of discrimination and reflects the people’s feeling of being excluded from society due to disabilities. 

The title of his dance was inspired by a game he played as a kid, he said, in which people communicate by using empty cans attached to a string. 

But the happiness of youth soon faded away for Socheat. Held back by his condition, he was left depressed and hopeless, trying to connect with people in society. However, what started as a challenge became the key for a new door in his life. 

Socheat started opening up and learning from other people. Through the arts, he found his value and people to connect with whom he could call friends. And this was the driving force that led him to chase after his dream in the arts. 

Like many other artists whose past helps fuel their goals, Pum Molyta presented her “Shadow” contemporary dance to convey a message inspired by her difficult past, struggling with low self-esteem and the emotions this triggered. Molyta was the only young woman selected for the grant to develop her artistic work. 

Molyta describes herself as a person struggling with society’s rejection and a lack of confidence and bravery. Connecting and building relationships with others in society was a challenge for her, she said. 

A stage was what Molyta needed to turn those shadows into light, negativity into positivity. She sought “the wellspring of love that symbolizes a bright future.” 

“Shadow” is meant to be left behind to pursue new hopes for the future and, through her dancing, Molyta proved it. 

Also using his upbringing as the background for artistic works, Dy Puthik is another soloist who won the grant for choreography work development, his dance step-by-step unfolding overwhelming feelings and loneliness of growing up in a family that had gone through the darkest time in the country’s history: the Khmer Rouge regime. 
 

Puthik was passed on the trauma of his parents due to what they had gone through before he was born. Quietness and invisible distance between the family members “overshadowed” everything due to the “survival instinct” within the household, affecting the most important thing that makes everyone feel warm in a family: intimacy. 

“It felt like living inside an invisible box, one shaped by trauma, silence, and identity, that constrained one physically and emotionally, keeping one from expressing oneself or doing what one truly wanted,” Puthik said. 

His dance called “Home” goes beyond the physical construction with the roof over one’s head. It was something more personal that Puthik valued: his bedroom, the one place where he could be himself.  

But, as the saying goes, nothing lasts. And so neither was the comfort and stillness he had first found in bed. The place where he could be vulnerable became suffocating, giving him nightmares. Surrounded by unspoken fears, his parents’ silence, and the rejection due to his gender identity, Puthik who had once tried to sleep to forget was flooded with unwanted memories.  

However on stage, his movements—which combined contemporary dance movements and Khmer classical dance ones—expressed his breaking out of the dark, facing those memories and seeing them for what they are. “Perhaps, this is also the way of healing,” Puthik said. 

But he felt that dance alone might not do so. Therefore at some moments during his work, Puthik accompanied the dance movements by spoken dialogues, and added a soundtrack mixing nature and Khmer Pin Peat sounds, which engaged the audience emotionally into his story. 

Another story of personal sorrows was laid bare by soloist Vong Vannak in his 3.5-minute contemporary dance. His work expressed his struggle to express his feelings during his youth. 

“Since childhood, I'd always hide my problems and tried to solve them alone, which made it incredibly difficult to carry all this inside me,” Vannak said. “I definitely wanted to bring those issues to light, but there appeared to be a barrier hindering me to express my thoughts and intentions.

“Meanwhile, a flood of hazy images filled my mind,” he said. “I lost my spirit and sense of self as I struggled to resolve these complex problems.”

Vannak named his dance “Barrier,” reflecting his always being afraid, concerned and passive in communication while also lacking confidence. During his dance, he not only speaks of his journey, but he also makes the audience relate to the situation. 

The third stage of the workshop will take place on Oct. 3 and 4 when the five winners will perform the dances they choreographed in front of the public, showing the final versions of their works after months of training and improvision. 

This final performance will also be meant to show the public the talent and achievements of the dance community in Cambodia.