Traditional Cambodian folk dance

My dear steemians followers, let me introduce again!

Some of you may know I've really enjoyed dancing from my young ages till now.
And had many performers on stages dancing Khmer traditional folk dance.
So if you like to travel around the world and step into my beautiful country Cambodia, don't forget to watch the dance show in Siem Reap if you love to dance.
Because that is one of our Khmer culture heritage and see on stamps.
Click on my link to old post!

My latest performer in 2017, robam chayam/ drum dance and I'm standing second right.

Cambodian folk dance in regions.

Cambodian dance is more likely revered and is a very popular art form in Cambodia!
Many Cambodian famous actresses in Cambodia got their start as dancers in mv video's or karaoke music.
The current Cambodian king was also a former dancer.
In the villages of Cambodia, plays performed by actors wearing a mask are popular and they also enjoyed.
The Cambodian folk dances are usually faster than classical dances.
The movements and gestures are not as gracefully as classical dance.
Folk dancers wearing different from classical dances and the people they are portraying such as Chams, hill tribes, farmers, and peasants from different provinces in Cambodia.
Some folk dances are about love or folktales in the area of the provinces.
And most of the music of Cambodian folk dances is played by a mahori orchestra.

My daughter at second left dancing Khmer leu.

The meanings and types of dances.

The best preserved and most well known of them in the West is the classical tradition dance, which has been closely connected to the court for centuries.
Classical dance has been revived but village folk dancing of the region is dying out, because of the victim of the Khmer Rouge in years and the competition from karaokes, pop music, etc.
These are one of my reasons why I wrote about Khmer region folk dance.
When you travel to Cambodia and have interesting in Khmer culture art dance you can watch at culture village performers in Siem Reap, in Phnom Penh at the musical performers and at Khmer new year in April at Angkor Wat.

Khmer dance is often referred to as robam;

The ancient dance as robam moram in Khmer.
The dance-dramas as lakhon in Khmer.
The classical dance of today as lakhon kbach boran in Khmer.

There are five main types of Cambodian dance;

1 Khmer folk dancing, associated with original tribes of the region in Cambodia.
2 Sacred dances, linked with Hinduism and Buddhism.
3 Classical dances traditionally performed for the Cambodia court.
4 Social folks dances which are danced at social gatherings such as ramvong, ram kbach ect.
5 Modern dances from now such as chak teuk dong or we called it bek sloy crazy weird dance.

History

So far we have no real evidence of our folk dance when it was exactly existed.
However, some tribal and folk dances performed in remote regions probably still contain elements from prehistoric times. Because in every region, our folk dance have a folktales and love story in that region and compose it into dance.
We also dance for praying to godspirit about the family life and have good time in life.
For example (coconut dance) is popular dance as well that came from Svayreak province, this dance always perform for wedding celebration and other celebration, make happiness, and especially they are showing about coconut nut.
Among the dances in the 1950 where the Leng Trott (Dance of the Stag) and Sneng Tonson (Dance of the Wild Oxen), originally believed to have been a hunting dance and the chhayam drum dance, a masked dance performed to gongs and drums before religious processions.
These were often performed as part of Khmer New Year’s festivals and featured comic verses.
The animist spirit is often subdued by the performance of a spirit dance, several early dances have Indian influences.
The Shiva cult has been in evidence in Cambodia since the A.D. for century.
We had been lucky the dancers who's had survived the Khmer Rouge and teaches the young generation till now!

Full video of Cambodian folk dances.

My experience of Cambodian folk dances.

Unfortunately I had not learned all the Khmer folk dance because I was growing up here in Netherlands and not in Cambodia. We lack of teachers, lives far at that period, who's cannot teach us, so we improvised learning from a video recorder or DVD we got from family friends in Cambodia.
For helping us here in Netherlands/Belgium to preserve our culture.
These are some Cambodian folk dances I had performed, robam kous trolok/ cocconut dance, robam khean/flute khean, robam konsaeng sneah/love scarf, robam chayam/drums dance, robam Khmer leu and bamboo dance so far I've remembered.

Many thanks for your time for reading my post and if you have any questions comment below.
Arkun tomh tomh from @rouer66!