Keep your eyes peeled for the first official event of the Festival - the SPOTLIGHT Parade! Created in collaboration with Bhor, this bright and bustling parade will be filled with eye-catching floats, 3-wheeled motos, wheelchairs, cyclos, tuk tuks and over 300 participants in colourful costumes. Beginning at the National Musuem, the parade will weave its way along the Phnom Penh riverside to end at the Chaktomuk Theatre. Festival participants will be joined by members of the local disabled community and Epic Arts partner organisations to dance their way through the streets, celebrating the beginning of our week of activities and excitement and promoting the SPOTLIGHT message "see ability not disability". In the lead up to the festival dance and movement workshops were facilitated with partner organisations; Mith Samlanh, La Valla School, The Indochine Starfish Foundation, Krousar Thmey and Cambodian Living Arts. Come and join the fun!!
The Opening Ceremony for the festival is set to dazzle featuring first-class performances by a selection of highly acclaimed inclusive artists from both within Cambodia and the wider Asian region.
Master of the "Mekong Delta Blues", some call Kong Nay the "Ray Charles of Cambodia". A charismatic blind chapei player whose trademark dark glasses are known all over Cambodia, Kong Nay is perhaps the best known of Cambodia's disabled artists. He will MC this opening evening event in the ancient Cambodian tradition of chapei dong veng.
Kim Sathia was one of the leading dancers of her time until a car accident in 1997 confined her to a wheelchair. In 2007 she created "Robamm Satrei", in the first of the SPOTLIGHT pre-festival workshops with her former colleagues Mao Tipmony and Kong Veasna. This new piece is the first inclusive dance work choreographed by a Cambodian.
Born in Singapore, Ramesh Meyyappan graduated from Liverpool Institute For Performing Arts with a first class honours degree. His highly refined technique which draws upon a variety of visual and physical techniques is extremely entertaining to both deaf and hearing audiences and has brought him success around the world.
In order to prove that disabled and non-disabled performers can work together, four performers started a dance group in Tokyo in 1988. Since then Creative SORA has toured both within Japan and Internationally. They will present a compelling contemporary inclusive dance piece entitled "Inochi, Meguru" (Life, Transmigration).
Founded in 1981, Koshu Roa Taiko is a Taiko drumming team in which all of the lead performers are hearing impaired. Well received around the world these skillful entertainers will impress you with an awe-inspiring performance combining breathtaking sound with highly refined movements.
Admission to the Opening Ceremony is by invitation only.
Swing by the Festival Club for a musical evening featuring chapei by Suon Peng (Cambodia).
Kok Leong, is a self-taught painter who paints by gripping a brush between his teeth. At 18, a close-to-fatal leg-locking somersault at a Lion Dance rehearsal paralysed him almost completely from the neck down. After his accident, he began taking painting lessons from a Chinese Ink Master and is a committed artist who works with watercolours and mixed media.
Kok Leong will conduct presentations of his extraordinary painting technique at various venues throughout the Festival week. An exhibition of his work is also on view at Metahouse until 1 March.
Sunday 24 February, 6.00pm
Metahouse
Friday 29 February, 2.30pm
Cambodia Trust, Inside Calmette Hospital
Saturday 1 March, 11.00am
Gasolina
Free admission
Mitsushima lost his eyesight as a child, and now relies on memory to select the colors, surfaces and shapes in his compositions. He studied philosophy and worked for many years as an acupuncturist before studying fine arts. Initially his practice was sculpture, working mostly with figurative clay, and has since developed a tactile painting style which enables us to appreciate art through the sense of touch. His artworks are intended to encourage viewers to articulate in their own words what they see.
Mitsushima will perform a live painting with local musicians in the open air at sunset. The combination of the music, the natural elements and the audience will determine his first site-specific painting in Cambodia.
This painting and an exhibition of his 'tactile' art-works can be seen at Gasolina during the Festival period.
Free admission
Come and celebrate the week that was with all our festival artists and supporters and catch one of the exhibitions before the artists leave town! Music, dance beats, it's a celebration!
Epic Arts and Metahouse present a film program of short-films, documentaries and features from across the globe that are made by, with and about people with a disability. These include the following:
Sharon Katz / Animation / Canada (2005) 4mins
A child achieves a small playground victory.
Barry Prescot / New Zealand / Comedy / (2006) 10mins
Alge dreams of being a dancer but the only thing standing in his way are his legs. He doesn't have any.
Clayton Jacobson / Drama / Australia (2003) 15mins
The silent world of deaf lovers is shattered by obsession, denial, and a recurring dream of betrayal.
Sarah Walker / Drama / UK (2005) 8mins
A blind date on wheels where nothing goes to plan.
Al Edirisinghe / Documentary / UK (2005) 45mins A disabled comedy group prepare bravely for their first ever performance at the world's biggest arts festival, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, but can they cut the comic mustard?
(Dir. Sven Olaf Hill) 80 mins
English, dubbed Khmer.
A dance/documentary film by Jo Parkes & Sven Olaf Hill (2007).
Sathia lives through dance. As a child in Cambodia she survives the Khmer Rouge regime by dancing for the soldiers. Later she becomes a celebrated classical dancer. One day she has a road accident and is left disabled and Sathia accepts that she will never dance again. Then she meets Katie, an English dancer, who desperately wants Sathia to dance with her and return to the stage.
Free admission
