Last year the Knight Foundation made a $1,000,000 grant to United States Artists, an organization that celebrates and supports the individual artist in America. Each Knight award comes with an additional $5,000 grant for the artist to create a community engagement event.  Today, our United States Artist Knight fellow Sophiline Cheam Shapiro checks in with an update…

On Saturday, 9 October 2010, I’ll be presenting a one-hour lecture-demonstration in Long Beach, California, introducing members of the Cambodian American community and other local audiences to my latest concert-length dance drama The Lives of Giants, which will be touring New England and the Mid-Atlantic in September and October (touring calendar), and simultaneously celebrating my being named one of the first two USA Knight Fellows.

The Lives of Giants, which examines the escalating impact of bullying, is the second dance drama in a trilogy concerned with repeated cycles of violence.  The first, Pamina Devi, which premiered at Vienna’s New Crowned Hope Festival in 2006, looked at the dangers of extreme rhetoric. The third, Kaley the Crocodile, which will premiere in 2012, explores revenge.

In Kaley the Crocodile, which I’m promoting through United States Artists’ ProjectSite, I’m joining forces with two of my favorite artists—composer Him Sophy, and sculptor Sopheap Pich—in order to bring to life a tragic tale of revenge and heartbreak from our culture’s rich storytelling tradition—folklore reflective of the recent history of our war-ravaged homeland and our own trauma-filled childhoods.

Brimming with gorgeous movement, sumptuous costuming, fanciful music and two enormous bamboo and rattan reptiles, Kaley the Crocodile will be performed by the renowned Khmer Arts Ensemble on major stages throughout the world beginning in 2012.  Kaley the Crocodile tells the story of a young woman, Kaley, who is traveling with her mother and father by boat on her way to marry a prince in the capital city when a giant crocodile attacks and eats them.  Before she dies, Kaley declares that she will be reborn as an even bigger crocodile so that she may avenge her terrible fate.  When her threat becomes her reality, she finds herself having to spend the rest of her life loveless and alone.

Through this magical, but timely, story, we are reminded—once again—that violence begets violence and that the triumph of revenge quickly transforms into the burden of self-perpetuating conflict.