About us


 

Chey Chankethya, Artistic Director

Kethya started her classical dance training at five. Upon completion of school, she pursued her studies at the Royal University of Fine Arts in the Faculty of Choreographic Arts and obtained her BA in 2005 - she also holds a BA degree in English from the Royal University of Phnom Penh. As one of Cambodia’s top classical dancers, she has had opportunities to perform nationally and internationally with the Cambodian ballet Royal Troupe. From 2001-2005, she was a performing artist in the Southeast Asia dance production Realizing Rama that toured Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan, Korea and India. Her choreographic works, both classical and contemporary, include Dilemma (2002), Falling in Love (2003), Golden Deer (2004), Preah Khan Reach (2005) and Water and Thunder (2006). In 2006, she was awarded a Choreography Arts Management Fellowship to support a three-month residency at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), which led to the creation of Same and Different. In 2007, Kethya participated in the Choreographer and Composer Workshop, a four-week training program in Surabaya, as part of the Indonesia Dance Festival. In 2009 she got an Asian Cultural Council grant to participate in American Dance Festival. Kethya taught classical dance at the Secondary School of Fine Arts and was the leader of Trey Visay (Compass), a dance ensemble consisting of nine young Cambodian dancers that aims to explore and create their own contemporary dance vocabulary. In 2011, she has got the Fullbright scholarship with an additional help of Asian Cultural Council to pursue her Master Degree of Fine Arts in Dance/Choreography in University of California, Los Angeles.  Kethya graduated in 2014 and joined Amrita as Artistic Director in August 2014.