Asia Society, Inta, Inc. and the Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture present a ten-week U.S. tour of a world premiere cross-cultural, multidisciplinary performance conceived and directed by renowned Japanese American dance duo Eiko & Koma. Created and performed in collaboration with ten young artists trained in Cambodia at the Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture, Cambodian Stories combines large-scale collective action-painting with choreographed movement. Artists explore the human body and Cambodian landscape in a performance that expresses the hope and rebirth of a nation that has been ravaged by the painful past of Pol Pot’s genocidal regime.

Cambodian Stories opens on a stage thickly covered with sand and strung with large canvases. It is on this barren and empty geography that the young Cambodian artists together with Eiko & Koma begin to move and create a forest of beautiful lithe bodies and arresting mural-like paintings that serve as a backdrop and catalyst for interaction.

"Through collaboration, these artists not only extend the definition of 'what is painting?' and 'what is dance?', but also create new visions for the future of Cambodia and the revitalization of a people," said Rachel Cooper, Asia Society’s Director of Cultural Programs and Performing Arts. Cambodian Stories is the result of a new community of artists from different generations, cultures and genres living and working together to realize the deeply transformative nature of art and the creative process. Other creative collaborators include Cambodian American Sam-Ang Sam (Music Director) and Reyum founder Daravuth Ly (Dramaturge).

Cambodian Stories is the result of a cultural exchange that began in June 2003 when Reyum co-founders Daravuth Ly invited Eiko & Koma to Cambodia upon seeing the duo in an outdoor performance in New York. A year later, Eiko & Koma traveled to Phnom Penh with the sponsorship of the Asian Cultural Council. As artists in residence, Eiko & Koma not only performed for and engaged with local villagers, Reyum staff and students, and a community of Cambodian artists and arts administrators, but offered a series of "Delicious Movement" workshops to young students of contemporary and traditional Cambodian art. For a month, Eiko & Koma lived and worked with these students whose experiences were reminiscent of their own youth in post-war Japan. Profoundly moved by their perceptiveness to movement and ability to express themselves through a new medium, Eiko & Koma decided to continue working with these young artists in a new project – Cambodian Stories.

The performance is accompanied by workshops with students from schools across the U.S. and a traveling exhibition of the young artists' paintings curated by the Reyum Institute faculty to be presented at select venues. This visual arts component further encourages dialogues about tradition, innovation and the role of the artist in fostering change.

To view the video of The Making of Cambodian Stories, please visit: http://claricesmithcenter.umd.edu/2006/c/Eiko_Koma

To purchase the DVD of The Making of Cambodian Stories, please visit: http://www.asiastore.org/events.html

The national tour of Eiko and Koma's Cambodian Stories is produced by Asia Society, Inta Inc. and the Reyum Institute of Arts and Culture (Phennom Penh) and made possible in part by support from the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Japan Foundation’s Performing Arts JAPAN program, the Rockefeller Foundation Multi-Arts Production Fund, the Asian Cultural Council with funds from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Living Legacy Creative Residency of the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University, the Mekong Project of Dance Theater Workshop, Asian Cultural Council, LINC (Leveraging Investments in Creativity), Altria Group, Inc. and the following individuals: Paul Vidich and Linda Sue Stein, Fred Wistow and Stacy Greene, and Tomohei Sasada.