AsiaLIFE

In 1927, the National Museum commissioned photographs of Cambodia’s Royal Ballet. Hidden away during the Khmer Rouge regime, the surviving images have been rediscovered and will be displayed for the first time this month. Ellie Dyer looks at the history behind the exhibition.

Kneeling down, fingertips outstretched, veteran dancer Nou Nâm prepares to be immortalised on camera.

Her elderly face set in an unreadable smile, the former favourite of two kings contorts her body into the elegant poses that she has performed with the Royal Ballet since she was a teenager - aware that the images being taken could help document a dying art form for generations to come.

The photograph is part of a project launched by the then-director of Phnom Penh’s National Museum, George Grolier, who organised a series of portraits of ballet dancers to be taken on glass plates in March, 1927.

“Just after the death of King Sisowath, the Royal Ballet was getting worse and worse. He was afraid the ballet would disappear - there was no more money for costumes and they would perform very rarely,” says Bertrand Porte, representative of École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO), an organisation that helped catalogue the collection.

“He wanted to do something before the end and keep the memory of the ballet and remember the movement of the ballet.”

But despite Grolier’s intention, the photographs that Nou Nâm helped to create lay forgotten for more than 80 years.

Placed within the National Museum photographic archives and kept in a basement to escape the cultural nihilism of the Khmer Rouge regime, the images are only now to be viewed by members of the public as part of an exhibition that opens this month.

“I think they [the images] had been completely forgotten. As far as I know, they have never been shown, never been used,” says Porte.

Two years ago, he thought there were only 10 to 20 ballet images in the museum’s collection of more than 3,100 fragile glass plates - which were the equivalent of negatives in the 1920s - but hundreds more have since been rediscovered.

“We started to check them one by one. One day, we put all the plates featuring dancers together and we realised there were a lot,” he says. “They all suffered during the war and although some plates are missing, it could have been worse.”

In total, some 450 plates displaying nearly 900 images of dancers were located. They were then cleaned and photographed by specialists, including experts from Australia and France. Dancers in Phnom Penh and an authority on the Royal Ballet were also called in to help explain the poses shown and link individual pictures together to form complete series of movements.

Performers are shown frozen in time, striking taut poses in front of a white screen set inside a doorway of the museum just metres away from where the photos will be displayed, 84 years later.

Dressed in simple costumes, with their hair short and expressions serene, the women portray princes, princesses, monkeys and giants. Hands outstretched, couples and solo artists weave through the air, illustrating the basic steps of the discipline. In some instances, awed children are pictured watching on, and it is believed that an orchestra provided accompaniment for the eight dancers who took part.

“The definition is extraordinary, you can spend hours and hours looking at them,” says Porte.

A 1920s account of the project shown to Porte by a Royal Ballet specialist has also breathed life into the images.

A paper written by Grolier in 1928 in the French review Mercure de France provides vivid descriptions of forgotten figures from the past.

He recounts details of many of the dancers’ personalities, especially Nou Nâm, who had performed for the sculptor Rodin in her youth and was nearing 50 at the time of the photographs. Grolier had to persuade her to take part in the project.

“She comes into my office, humble and thin; of her beauty she has preserved only her velvety eyes, daring and intelligence,” he wrote. “People no longer know how to dance, she told me with disdain, pouting as though chewing gall. I flatter her, insist, persuade her.”

Grolier’s description details her transformation from elderly woman into the lithe dancer of her youth who “takes control and lets herself go”.

For those currently working on the project, the account has created a personal relationship with the exhibition, which will feature glass plates, prints of the images and a slideshow.

“There’s a story there between Grolier and the dancers,” says Porte.

“We speak about Nou Nâm as if she was here.”

‘With the Royal Dancers’ is set to run at the National Museum from Dec. 1 into early 2012. Entry is free.