Art as a tool for healing? Cambodian circus fosters joy and confidence.
A short drive away from the famed Angkor Wat temple ruins in Siem Reap, Cambodia, another spectacle has been quietly attracting visitors for years. Every evening, under the big top at the Phare Circus, audiences watch mesmerized as acrobats and artists jump and somersault, dance and paint, execute midair flips and twist into pretzels.
Forgetting the discomfort of the hard wood seats, the viewers cheer and clap at the entertainers, who work in perfect harmony as a team.
Watching them smile under the spotlight, it is difficult to imagine that these confident young men and women come from impoverished or troubled families. Celebrating its 10th anniversary on Feb. 8, Phare Circus simultaneously provides young Cambodians with a livelihood and showcases the talents of students at Phare Ponleu Selpak, a not-for-profit arts school located in Battambang, Cambodia.
Phare Ponleu Selpak – meaning “The Brightness of the Arts” – was set up in 1994 by French art teacher Véronique Decrop, who practiced art therapy at refugee camps, and a small group of refugees who returned home from Thailand after the brutal Khmer Rouge regime ended in 1979. Apart from giving children a safe space away from crowded homes and dangerous streets, the school aims to revive arts that were decimated during the Cambodian genocide. Their restoration has brought healing and joy to performers and audiences alike.
“The Khmer Rouge left us with zero – 1,000 years of history of the Cambodian empire reduced to ash. More than 90% of the masters were killed or just disappeared,” says musician and genocide survivor Arn Chorn-Pond, who founded Cambodian Living Arts, an organization that provides arts education scholarships.
Preserving the arts “gives young Cambodians something to hold on to from their past,” he says. “It also gives them an identity; it gives them confidence; it gives them the voice to tell their own stories to the world.”
Continues: https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-So ... confidence
Cambodian circus fosters joy and confidence
- Bong Burgundy
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I'd be interested to know how much the performers earn for their "work" with the circus.
"Goodness me! Now STD free..."
Probably would avoid using the word joy to describe anything in the KoW. o.o
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Meum est propositum in taberna mori,
ut sint Guinness proxima morientis ori.
tunc cantabunt letius angelorum chori:
"Sit Deus propitius huic potatori."
ut sint Guinness proxima morientis ori.
tunc cantabunt letius angelorum chori:
"Sit Deus propitius huic potatori."
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