Creative Capital

Sophiline Shapiro Pamina Devi

Discipline
Performing Arts
Medium
Dance
Subject

Democracy

Tradition
State
California
Year
2006
Status
Touring

Description

Pamina Devi re-imagines Mozart’s opera, The Magic Flute, as a Cambodian classical dance. Sophiline Shapiro interprets this Enlightenment-era work in the style of her native country as a way to explore divergent cultural viewpoints on the meaning of revolution and the way extreme righteousness and rhetoric can lead to extraordinary cruelty. Shapiro brings to Pamina Devi a movement vocabulary of refined gestures, a series of elaborate costumes and sets, and an original score of percussive music. Working with a Phnom Penh company of classical dancers, the piece was premiered in 2006 as part of Vienna’s New Crowned Hope Festival, which celebrated the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth.

Sophiline Shapiro

A native of Cambodia, Sophiline Shapiro emigrated to Southern California in 1991. Her classical dance Samritechak/Othello was presented in Phnom Penh wi…
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Project Updates

2011: Pamina Devi is performed by the Khmer Arts Ensemble at Phnom Penh’s Chaktumok Hall as part of the Cambodian Ministry of Culture’s National Performing Arts Festival
2006: Pamina Devi premieres at Vienna’s Schlosstheater Schonbrunn as part of the New Crowned Hope Festival