2021 Volume 2021 Issue 63 Pages 134-155
This paper centers on the case of robam boran (Cambodian classical dance), and more specifically the acquisition of embedded dance skills through the process of apprenticeship as it evolves into the post-modern period. The model of apprenticeship is one that derives from ancient times but has endured into the present due to its indispensability. Lave and Wenger (1993) introduced the theory of community embedded skill acquisition through Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP), in which learning occurs through the community of practice, and after which full participation can be achieved as one gains legitimacy and credibility. Fukushima (1995) took this theory one step forward using the case of noh and kagura dance, where he argued that the social construction of the body has been reinforced through the idea of performing art apprenticeship education (geidoteki totei kyouiku), a dedicated non-systematized kinesthetic learning process. Ikuta (2019) questions whether performing art apprenticeship education can ever truly be replaced by curriculum-based education, even as many others consider the transition away from apprenticeship, which started with western industrialization, to be inevitable. She considered that an irreplaceable dimension of performing art apprenticeship education is that it does not differentiate between learning and life, but is rather an integrated humanistic education.
In this paper, I propose that, while apprenticeship does indeed contain many irreplaceable elements, how apprenticeship is embedded in the wider education process can evolve across time and context. I use comparative analysis to explore the continuities and adjustments faced by performing art apprenticeship education. While this form of education has received little coverage in recent decades because wholesale changes in the education system were the primary focus, Cambodian society is now rediscovering the value of apprenticeship. This is part of a broader unfolding of the post-war reconstruction and development process in Cambodia, in which the early stages focused on macro-level reforms, leaving secondary areas for subsequent intervention. In the context of post-colonial educational reform, it is also important to pause and consider whether pre-modern forms of instruction should be given the opportunity to evolve, instead of being preemptively replaced.
To study this phenomenon, I examine a range of classical dance education systems, ranging from large, public systems to diaspora-based private entities. In Cambodia, I evaluate the Royal University of Fine Arts, Faculty of Choreographic Arts, Department of Dance, Classical Dance Course (hereafter, RUFAC), the institution that took over dance education in 1970 when it was separated from the Royal Palace. Abroad, I study the Khmer Arts Academy (KAA) which was established in Long Beach, California by Sophiline Cheam Shapiro to serve the largest diaspora Khmer community in the world using approaches that are approximately grounded in RUFAC’s pedagogical approach. As an in-between case, I present the example of Prumsodun Ok and NATYARASA Dance Company (PrumN), Cambodia’s first gay identified classical dance company, which was established in Cambodia by a diaspora teacher. Collectively, these cases represent the range of conservative to post-modern manifestations of classical dance education, all of which continue to engage apprenticeship as the primary mode of instruction, although its expression differs in each case. Social science fieldwork began in 2003 and was conducted intermittently over the subsequent 15 years, mostly in Cambodia but also partly abroad and virtually. (View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)
