Klairung Amratisha
Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
Queen Sisowath Kossamak (1904-1975), born Princess Sisowath Kossamak Nearireath, was the daughter of King Sisowath Monivong and the mother of King Norodom Sihanouk. When Cambodia gained independence in 1955 and King Sihanouk abdicated to enter politics, his parents, Prince Norodom Suramarit and Princess Kossamak, jointly succeeded their son on the throne. After King Suramarit’s death in 1960, Queen Kossamak continued to perform the ceremonial functions of the monarchy until the proclamation of the Khmer Republic in 1970. Although wielding no political power, Queen Kossamak was culturally significant in newly independent Cambodia. Inspired by one of the most common icons of Cambodia, the apsaras or the celestial dancers on the bas-reliefs of Angkor temples, Queen Kossamak, who was the patron of the court dance, commissioned court dance masters to create a non-narrative dance piece entitled Apsara in the 1950s and trained her granddaughter, Princess Norodom Buppha Devi, to perform the role of Mera, the central figure of the dance. The Apsara dance shows the Apsara Mera, whose marriage to the Sage Kambu is the myth of the origin of the Khmers, leading her coterie of four or six dancers on an outing to a garden. With imagery evocative of Cambodia’s ancient glory, the Apsara dance has been performed since the 1960s in almost every important occasion, both at home and abroad, to remind the audience of the roots of Khmer civilization.
The study of Queen Kossamak’s use of images of apsaras on ancient temple walls as portraits of the forebears of modern Cambodian earthly dancers may provide insight into the way Cambodians see themselves. Accordingly, this paper aims to trace the genesis of the Apsara dance and how it has been strongly associated with the foundation of Cambodian cultural and national identity.
(Presented in the 2013 Chulalongkorn Asian Heritage Forum: The Emergence and Heritage of Asian Women Intellectuals, 10-11 September 2013, Imperial Queen’s Park Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Institute of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts and Indian Studies Center, Chulalongkorn University)