Charya Burt Cambodian Dance

Charya Burt

Master Dancer/Choreographer/Teacher
Founder of Charya Burt Cambodian Dance

Charya Burt is an acclaimed master dancer, choreographer, vocalist and teacher of Classical Cambodian Dance. After the Khmer Rouge genocide, Burt trained extensively with Cambodia’s foremost surviving dance masters, eventually joining the dance faculty of Cambodia’s Royal University of Fine Arts. A Hewlett 50 Commission was awarded her in 2021 to create The Rebirth of Apsara: Artistic Lineage, Cultural Resilience and the Resurrection of Cambodian Arts from the Ashes of Genocide that premiered in 2024 at Sonoma State University’s Green Music Center. An inaugural Dance/USA and 2022 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellow and Isadora Duncan Award recipient for Individual Performance, Burt’s mission is to continue to preserve and renew her art-form, elevate the professionalism of community dance groups, and to create innovative new works firmly rooted in tradition. A true culture bearer, Burt is founding artistic director of Charya Burt Cambodian Dance, based in the San Francisco North Bay

Announcements

The Rebirth of Apsara: Beyond Genocide, an adaptation of the premiere production of The Rebirth of Apsara, a Hewlett 50 Arts Commission, premiered at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center on April 19, 2025, as part of their “Celebrating Our HeArt-felt Heritage” series. This new dance/theatre production is created to observe the 50th Anniversary of the beginning of the Khmer Rouge Genocide and to honor its survivors, the resilience of the Cambodian spirit, and how Khmer arts has been and continues to be transmitted from generation to generation. The original story by Rob and Charya Burt with text by Kalean Ung has been modified with additional text by Charya to make this adaptation more personal highlighting the voices of Charya’s Uncle Chheng Phon and her mother, Samet Chheng. Charya sets her re-imagined classical dance gestures to music by renowned Cambodian-American composer Chinary Ung and traditional Khmer pin-peat all tied together by a soundscape performed live by Marimba Lumina virtuoso Joel Davel and an engaging video backdrop designed by Hsuan-Kuang Hsieh. The work is structured to allow for limited involvement of community dancers at the beginning and end of the production to highlight the resilience of diaspora communities beyond genocide.

https://oacc.cc/event/the-rebirth-of-apsara-beyond-genocide/

The work will first tour to Lowell Massachusetts on June 6 and 7 in a partnership with Middlesex community College, Cambodia Town Lowell Inc., Vatt Khmer Lowell and the Khmer American Cultural Center with funding from Khmer Kampuchea Krom and fiscal sponsorship from New Performance Traditions.

Please visit The Charya Burt Cambodian Dance Digital Library for on-line resources that include authentic dances from the classical repertory, innovative new works by Charya Burt rooted in tradition, and instructional dance and costuming videos. Support for this project has come from an ACTA Living Cultures Grant and a Dance/USA Summer Archiving Fellowship.

https://www.actaonline.org/profile/charya-burt-cambodian-dance-company/