Arts & Healing: Virtual Festival
December 12 - 20, 2020
Performances, talks, screenings - including premiere of new music inspired by Bangsokol and a ritual dance performance
Global program with artists, performing arts professionals and audiences from 6 countries
In response to the challenges and realities of 2020, Cambodian Living Arts and ArtsEmerson are staging Arts & Healing: Bangsokol Virtual Festival from December 12th to December 20th. The program is inspired by the groundbreaking multi-disciplinary production, Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia, which seeks to honour victims of violence and explore the healing, hope and resilience of survivors. Through a two-week series of online performances, talks and film screenings, artists, audiences, and leading cultural organizations from around the world will revisit the making of the production and reflect on what this work and this project has meant to them. The festival culminates with two brand new music and dance performances created exclusively for the festival.
Access to the festival program is available via: bangsokol.cambodianlivingarts.org/2020-festival
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
Bangsokol, a Requiem for Cambodia is the first major symphonic work that addresses the traumas of the late 1970s in Cambodia. The work combines traditional Khmer music forms with a Western chamber orchestra and chorus, as well as dance and visual projections. The work seeks to honour all victims of violent conflict and advocate for peace education so that we may forge new paths going forward. The production, commissioned by Cambodian Living Arts (CLA), was the outcome of a 7-year development process, and involved over 100 artists from six countries. Since its world premiere in Australia in 2017, Bangsokol has toured in the USA, France, and most recently Cambodia in November 2019.
In December 2020, CLA and ArtsEmerson will produce a virtual festival as a follow on from the Bangsokol production, involving artists, organisations and communities connected with the project. The virtual programming will include film and concert screenings, talks and newly created artistic works, specifically for online presentation. The festival will link the themes and experiences of this unique production into the contemporary context of pandemic, trauma and conflicts being experienced globally in 2020.
The 2-week festival program will celebrate the intercultural connections forged around a Cambodian story, explore changing contexts in a time of global pandemic and highlight resilience, as well as creative strategies, collaborations, and responses to crisis. The program includes a mixture of screenings (including a documentary about the making of Bangsokol and the Royal Gala Performance in Phnom Penh in November 2019) alongside interactive discussions, all of which will take place virtually and be shared online. The finale of the festival will comprise new music inspired by Bangsokol and a ritual dance performance, commissioned especially for the festival and featuring artists from five of the countries involved in the production.
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