Prumsodun Ok

Long Beach, CA

Prumsodun Ok is an artist and cultural activist based in Long Beach, California where he teaches filmmaking to inner-city youth with the YMCA Youth Institute, is a videographer for the Cambodian Community History and Archiving Project, and teaches classical Cambodian dance at the Khmer Arts Academy, as well as serving as its curator and media designer. Ok draws upon beliefs of reincarnation and the ritualistic, meditative language of Cambodian classical dance to illustrate a relationship transcendent of form and image, gender and sexuality, to say clearly: “Let love live.”

Festival Weekend 3 Artist
Performing Thursday-Sunday, November 19-22, 8pm
Buy Tickets!

“Robam Lom Arom”
In the stillness of night, Neang Sovann Atmani bathes in a river as she waits for her absent husband. She succumbs to the phantom weight of his memory and gives herself to its caress. Drawing upon the hypnotic, serpentine vocabulary of Cambodian classical dance and personal history, Prumsodun Ok interweaves text, video, sound and movement to create a world of longing. Through reincarnation and the image of the sacred androgyne — spirits that manifest themselves differently with each life, a brahmin that is half-male and half-female — Ok invites us to contemplate the fluidity between vinhean (spirit) and rub (form), man and woman.

Prumsodun Ok is a Performing Diaspora Resident Artist at CountePULSE.
See him at weekend 3 of Performing Diaspora, November 19-22.
Buy tickets now!

Dear Callie,
I am walking with a bag in my hand.  It is small and brown, the head of a teddy bear just barely creeping out at the top.  I’ve thought much of my new niece [...]

Prumsodun Ok is a Performing Diaspora Resident Artist at CountePULSE.
See him at weekend 3 of Performing Diaspora, November 19-22.
Buy tickets now!

AN OFFERING
Oh Lady,
Master of unending grace,
Bless me with your beauty,
Let me share it with the world.
The flowers that adorn you,
Give birth to divine secrets,
Illusion is shattered,
With the power of this knowledge.
Show me with your smile,
The [...]

“He, who is described as male, is as much the female and the penetrating eye does not fail to see it.” – Rigveda
It is 4.06 AM.  My eyes tell me that I need to sleep but lying in bed is proving useless as thoughts race through my head.  I was in Cambodia for ten [...]

A Cambodian classical dancer, when practicing her moving meditation developed over a thousand years ago as a ritual prayer, displays a serpentine grace that is hypnotic and sublime. Her form is supple, her gestures fluid, and she floats in curvilinear paths across the stage. This is no coincidence as the serpent – moving like the waters that bring fertility and sustenance to the land, bridge between heaven and earth, the being in which the first “Cambodian” sovereign took form (in one creation story anyways) – was worshiped prevalently throughout what is now Cambodia before the introduction of major religions. And today, after many generations of refinement, the serpent can still be seen in this highly stylized art form: its scales transformed into a costume’s detail and its function assumed by a human dancer.