'Hyperextension: How Cambodian Dancers Navigate Precarity'

The Global Studies Seminar presents “Hyperextension: How Cambodian Dancers Navigate Precarity” by Denison University’s Visiting Instructor of Anthropology Celia Tuchman-Rosta.

Adorned with gold-colored bracelets, necklaces and crowns and dressed in patterned silk skirts, elaborately sequined shawls, and form-fitting silk tops that emphasize the elegant curves of their hyperextended bodies, the classical dancer is a bodily representation of the essence of Khmer culture. Her body is used politically to demonstrate both unity (in national performances) and cultural uniqueness (for foreign tourists). Her body, at least prior to the COVID pandemic, was also used to strengthen the country economically in the tourism industry and in the emerging cultural sector. Classical dance, and by extension the dancers’ bodies have been exploited and commodified, used as a resource to support economic gain. At the same time, within national discourses the dance form is highly valued. Competing notions of artistic value require dancers to forge strategies to cope with contradictory messages as they continue to train, create, and perform in the genre. Cambodia’s performers faced economic and social issues pre-COVID and continue to face them as the pandemic still impacts arts production. Using field research over 10-plus years in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, this talk addresses the struggle of these performers as symbols of national identity who represent a link with Cambodia’s past. 

Tuchman-Rosta has received a DURF fellowship (2024), Association for Asian Studies Pipeline Fellowship (2022-2023), a Center For Khmer Studies Senior Research Fellowship, and a Fulbright award to support her research in Cambodia that investigates the effects of tourism, national policy, and discourses of intangible heritage on the creative and economic development of classical Cambodian dance. She is published in Economic Anthropology and Asian Theater Journal and recently co-edited and contributed to a special issue for Tourist Studies (Dec. 2024). She currently serves as the program chair for the Council on Heritage and the Anthropology of Tourism (CHAT) at the American Anthropological Association.