My first time out of Cambodia to take a ballet exam

In 2018 I went to Thailand to take my first ballet exam. Everything was very new to me - it was my first time out of the country, on an airplane, eating Thai food, being a foreigner, in a different dance studio, seeing other dancers outside Cambodia and taking an RAD (Royal Academy of Dance) exam!!!

These first times were wonderful. I really loved being outside Cambodia and learning so many things from it. But I was also sick at the same time because of the traveling and being in a different environment.

However, because of that sickness, I have learned t

hat even when I am in pain, I’m not alone to walk by myself, there are people that are praying and caring for me. This gave me courage to manage to fight the sickness and take the exam. When we finally got the result from the RAD - I passed with Distinction!!! ( the highest mark available for the exam)

Moving to the city and finding dance

Moving to Phnom Penh

After being at a residential NGO home for children for 3 and a half years, the home moved to Phnom Penh, which is the capital city of Cambodia. At first, I did not enjoy the city very much. I really missed life in the countryside - being able to walk in the forest, climbing trees and having fun. But a year after our move, I found something that made my heart happy - it was dance!!!

Me in Phnom Penh in the first year.

How dance found me

Living in Cambodia, it’s impossible to know that ballet and contemporary dance exist. I didn’t know what ballet looked like until the Central School of Ballet Phnom Penh (CSBPP), which is now English Ballet Theatre Cambodia (EBTC) came to Cambodia for the first time. My first experience with dance was a workshop where we learned to tell a story with our bodies. Out of this I joined the community dance project called Dance Made in Cambodia (DMIC). After our performance, my teacher (Stephen) told me that I had been given a full scholarship to learn ballet. I was so happy when I heard that news. I started my training in 2014. I felt that dance was fun and something I was good at. Here are some pictures from my first community dance project.

When I was young!

I started my life in a loving family in a province in Cambodia. I had two loving parents and 3 older siblings. Every day my parents would play the Khmer traditional songs and music. My mother was a respectful woman, she always helped people who did not have enough food and clothes. She gave them water from our well, which was the only one that we had in my district. Because of that, we had a good relationship with our neighbors and my whole family was known to all of that area. My family had enough money to live and we would always eat meat and not many vegetables, which wasn’t good for us.

The house I lived in with my parents. No one has lived there for 10 years.

A life without parents

One day, my life changed when my parents were killed in a road accident. After I recovered from my own injuries in the same accident, my siblings and I were sent to live with my grandparents. Even though we lived with our grandparents, my siblings and I had to find jobs to make a living. Finally, we found out that we could sell sugar palm juice so that we could have money to buy food. My sister and I were too small to helped my brothers, so they decided one of them had to stay at home and get the sugar palm ready while the other went with me and my sister to help him with the ice.

Me with my older sister and one of my brothers selling sugar palm juice.

However, when i was 7 my grandparents decided to send us to live in a children’s home near where they lived so that we could go to school. I felt like I was having to restart my life again - new place, new people. But as time went by, I started to feel like I belonged there.

Me and one of my brothers at my Aunt's wedding.