Recent Performances/Workshops
The picture above was taken by RJ Muna for the 40th Anniversary San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival for Charya’s Of Spirits Intertwined World Premiere at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. Charya has been a featured dancer at the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival 17 times between the years 1995 and 2018.
Silenced – Excerpts from the World Premiere
The video below, originally developed as a 5 minute work sample, presents highlights from Charya’s world premiere of Silenced at the Studio Theater at California State University Long Beach in 2018. Charya mounted this hour-long production in partnership with Khmer Arts Academy. The last clip of the video is from the panel discussion following the performance which includes Dr. Leakhena Nou, Associate Professor of Sociology at CSU, Long Beach; Dr. Susan Needham, Professor of Anthropology at CSU, Dominguez Hills; singer/educator Tiffany Lytle; and lead singer of Dengue Fever, Chhnom Nimol.
Silenced is a dance theatre piece honoring the life of one of Cambodia’s most iconic singers, Ros Sereysothea, who perished at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. It was created to connect past to present in ways that celebrate ancient Khmer beauty while helping to reconcile Cambodia’s recent tragic past. The piece joins a variety of musical forms including pin peat and traditional Khmer music to represent Sothea’s musical and cultural foundations, Cambodian pop music from the 1960’s, both recorded and sung live, to evoke the vibrancy of her life during the Golden Age of Cambodian pop music, and original compositions for guitar used to symbolize her shattered life under the Khmer Rouge. Video imagery is used as a backdrop for dance choreography that includes classical and classically inspired movements and gestures along with other choreographies to help tell her story.
The Evolution of Silenced
Charya’s journey to create Silenced began in 2014 with an Investing in Artists Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation to establish a residency at CounterPULSE in San Francisco resulting in a thirty-minute work-in-progress performance. She experimented with a range of techniques in partnership with the Imaginists Theatre Company in Santa Rosa ending with another work-in-progress performance. Finally, with the support of a CA$H grant from Dancers’ Group in San Francisco, Charya created the prologue to the piece. Because Khmer Arts Academy (KAA) lies at the heart of the Cambodian community in Long Beach and has been the premiere training ground for Cambodian classical dancers for over 15 years, Charya decided to form a partnership with KAA to premiere the full-length production of the work at the Long Beach State University Studio Theatre in June of 2018 supported, in part, by a Living Cultures Program Grant from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts. By all measures, the production was a great success. Charya hopes to bring this work to other established Cambodian communities so that those who live in and around those communities can experience a work of art that will allow them to better understand Cambodia’s recent past while fostering reflection on how to move forward, focusing more on the beauty of Cambodian arts than on the genocidal Khmer Rouge that too often defines where Cambodian’s come from.
2021
May 27
Celebrating Asian Futures with Vân-Ánh Võ and Friends, Asian Art Museum, https://calendar.asianart.org/event/celebrating-asian-futures-a-musical-conversation-with-van-anh-vo-and-friends/.
April 18,
Mekong River of Melodies, Vietnamese American Nongovernmental Organization Network (VA-NGO) and the Cambodian American Resource Agency (CARA): https://www.facebook.com/PIVOTorg/videos/va-ngo-mekong-river-of-melodies/212258147333459/
2020
November 14
Charya’s theatrical debut in Shayan Lotfi’s Kingdom of Wonder as part of Boston Court Pasadena’s New Play Reading Festival.
October 6
Live Arts in Resistance: Ancestral Knowledge, Art and Resistance an interview with Charya Burt presented by World Arts West: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3081481888630203
September 4
International Festival by International House Davis: https://youtu.be/mEEqwMrfoA0
July 13
Sangam Arts’ Mosaic Connect: The Ancient Contemporary: https://www.facebook.com/373414873126046/videos/635330860665520
June 1
San Francisco Loves Leaning on KTVU PLUS Celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month: https://youtu.be/UeFj-Uxczbw.
February 23
Dance workshop for United Khmer Cultural Preservation, Fresno, California
February 22
Dance Workshop for Wat Modesto Dance Group, Modesto, California
2019
December
Installation Art Performance of Silenced, Battambang, Cambodia
Workshop Documentations for Community Resources, Phnom Penh, Cambodia
November 17
Dance workshop for the Cambodian Cultural Dance Group in San Jose, California
November 9
Dance workshops for the Khmer Ballet of Stockton and the Morodok Khmer Performing Arts in Stockton, California
October 19th-20th
Performance and dance demonstration as part Sophiline Arts Ensemble at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC
September 29
Dance workshop for United Khmer Cultural Preservation, Fresno, California
September 27
Dance workshop for Khmer Youth of Modesto, California
July 4th & 6th
Silenced Oregon Shakespeare Festival Green Show, Ashland, Oregon. https://www.osfashland.org/en/artist-biographies/green-show/Charya-Burt-Cambodian-Dance.aspx
March 26
Workshop for Multi-Cultural Week, Santa Rosa Middle School, Santa Rosa, California
March 9
Femina – Celebrating Women, Presented by Sangam Arts at Joe Goode Annex Theatre, San Francisco, California. http://sangamarts.org
2018
July 21st & 22nd
World Premiere – Of Spirits Intertwined – presented by World Arts West for the 40th Anniversary of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, California http://worldartswest.org
May 19th & 20th
World Premiere of Silenced, in partnership with Khmer Arts Academy, California State University Long Beach Studio Theatre, Long Beach, California. khmerarts.org
April 27th-28th
Children of the Refugees preliminary presentation as part of the Critical Refugees Studies Collective MRPI Conference at UCLA. http://criticalrefugeestudies.com/storymaps/bay-area/
February 28
Workshop for Multi-Cultural Week, Santa Rosa Middle School, Santa Rosa, California
2017
November 27
Dance demonstration/performance at Redwood Shores, California.
November 18
Meet & Greet with Master Dancer and Choreographer, Charya Burt a special performance as part of Charya’s residency with Khmer Arts Academy, Long Beach. http://www.khmerarts.org
November 14
Performance of Cinnabar Heart celebrating distinguished composer Chinary Ung’s 75th Year, Experimental Theatre, UC San Diego, http://music.ucsd.edu/concerts
November 3
Rotunda Dance Series, Celestial Flowers, City Hall, San Francisco, http://dancersgroup.org/rotunda
September 30
Workshop for Southeast Asian Arts & Culture Coalition’s Mid-Autumn Harvest Festival, Tenderloin Recreation Center, SF, http://seaacc-sf.org
August 25
Full-length production of original works for 85th Anniversary Season Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Inside/Out Performance Series, Becket, Massachusetts https://www.jacobspillow.org/events/insideout-charya-cambodian-dance/
August 4th & 6th
Crossfade: Classical Ideals of Beauty, Oregon Shakespeare Festival Green Show, Ashland, Oregon. https://www.osfashland.org/artist-biographies/green-show/Charya-Burt-Cambodian-Dance.aspx. or https://www.osfashland.org/greenshow
May 19
Special Performance for the Dedication of Burt Theatre, Elsie Allen High School, Santa Rosa, CA
May 18
Performance of original works for the annual Asian American Heritage Celebration, San Leandro Public Library. http://www.sanleandrolibrary.org
February 23
Workshop for Multi-Cultural Week, Santa Rosa Middle School, Santa Rosa, California
January 8
Performance of Reamker (excerpts), the Khmer version of the Ramayana, as part of the Ramayana cross-cultural comparison of dance at the Samsung Hall in the Asian Arts Museum. http://www.asianart.org/events/1041?starttime=1475193600