Sophiline Cheam Shapiro

Sophiline Cheam Shapiro is a Cambodian classical dancer, choreographer, vocalist, and educator who emerged from the post-Khmer Rouge reconstruction of Cambodian cultural life to become a master artist and innovator in her form. Born in Cambodia, she entered the newly reopened School of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh in 1981, transferred into the classical dance program in 1982, and graduated with a Diploma of Arts in 1988. Her training was rigorous: morning technique, afternoon general education, and private practice with a teacher. As a member of the school ensemble and faculty, she toured internationally—to India, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and the United States—establishing herself as both performer and bearer of a repertoire whose masters and archives had been devastated by the regime.

Shapiro immigrated to Southern California in 1991 and immediately began teaching Cambodian classical dance within refugee and immigrant communities, first through existing troupes and temples and later in Long Beach. She has described practice and teaching as ways to maintain cultural identity in migration, making preservation a lived process rather than a museum exercise. In 2000, the Alliance for California Traditional Arts documented her master-apprentice work with Socheata Heng, one of roughly one hundred young Cambodian Americans she had trained by that time.

In 2002, Shapiro co-founded Khmer Arts Academy in Long Beach, and in 2006 helped establish a professional center in Cambodia. As founding artistic director, she developed work across national borders while supporting professional dancers and musicians. Her choreography includes *Samritechak* (2000), a Cambodian classical adaptation engaging with *Othello*; *The Glass Box* (2002); *Seasons of Migration* (2005); *Pamina Devi* (2006); and *A Bend in the River* (2013), created with composer Him Sophy and sculptor Sopheap Pich.

Shapiro's honors include Guggenheim and Irvine fellowships, the Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture, a United States Artists fellowship, and the 2009 NEA National Heritage Fellowship. The NEA recognized both her mastery of a centuries-old form and her argument that preservation requires apprenticeships, documentation, and new repertoire. That combination—continuity without artistic stasis—defines her contribution to contemporary Cambodian dance.