Biography

Charya Burt is an acclaimed master dancer; choreographer, vocalist and teacher of Classical Cambodian Dance who has injected new life into the dance form by creating classically inspired, inventive new works. Her training began shortly after the Khmer Rouge genocide with the foremost surviving dance masters of Cambodia at the Royal University of Fine Arts, serving on the dance faculty there from 1989-1992. As a member of Cambodia’s Royal Dance Troupe, Charya toured nationally and internationally. After emigrating in 1993, Burt has performed throughout the USA, including LA’s Getty Museum, the Kennedy Center, San Francisco Opera House and has been featured countless times at the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. Her original works have been presented by Jacob’s Pillow Festival, World Arts West, CounterPULSE, San Francisco Asian Art Museum, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and many others.

Among her numerous honors Burt is an inaugural Dance/USA Fellow, a 2022 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellow for Artists Transforming Communities and recipient of the Isadora Duncan Award for Individual Performance. Center for Cultural Innovation and Creative Work Fund has each granted Burt multiple awards. Her work has been chronicled in KQED Arts, Cambodian’s Dark Past Behind Her, A Dancer Steps into the Light (2014), and the US Department of State’s A Living Legacy: Classical Cambodian Dance Thrives in California (2010). She has lead collaborations with Indian, Japanese and Central Asian dancers and has worked with innumerable established designers and musicians, including composers Chinary Ung and Van-Anh Vo. 

Burt has devoted her life to reviving classical Cambodian dance through preserving authentic movements, gestures, and dances of the classical repertory, strengthening a sense of cultural identity for Cambodian-Americans. A 5-time Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) master artist awardee, Burt has trained thousands of dance students throughout California including multiple stints as artist-in-residence at Cambodian cultural centers in Stockton, San Jose, and Khmer Arts Academy, Long Beach. In 2021 she received an ACTA Living Cultures grant to create the Charya Burt Cambodian Dance Digital Library and in 2022 a Dance/USA archiving fellow to continue developing the library.

In 2018 Burt premiered her full-length dance/theatre piece, Silenced, at CSU Long Beach partnering with Khmer Arts Academy to explore how Cambodians are more defined by the Golden Age of the 1960’s than the genocide that ended it. This production, along with her Children of the Refugees (2017) symbolize Burt’s work to help the Cambodian Diaspora heal by reconciling and co-existing with their dark past.  Other choreographic works include Of Spirits Intertwined (2018), Heavenly Garden (2016), and Blossoming Antiquities: Rodin’s Encounter with the Celestial Dancers of Cambodia (2013). Burt’s upcoming premieres include Beautiful Dark in partnership with Mosaic America exploring the socio-cultural impacts of colorism on immigrant communities of color and The Rebirth of Apsara: Artistic Lineage, Cultural Resilience, and the Resurrection of Cambodian Arts from the Ashes of Genocide, her 2021 Hewlett 50 Arts commission exploring how traditional Cambodian Arts is ever evolving with four generations of multi-disciplinary Cambodian-American artists.

A true culture bearer, 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. She is founding artistic director of Charya Burt Cambodian Dance, based in the San Francisco North Bay.