”Artistic Director Chumvan Sodhachivy ”
Chumvan Sodhachivy ”aka Belle” is a dancer, choreographer, and founder of the SilverBell Dance Group of Performing Artists, who started her training in Khmer classical dance at the age of 9. After spending many years mastering the basics of the ancestral art, Belle has been performing mostly male roles ”neay rong”, while nurturing Khmer cultural heritage by also performing Cambodian traditional folk dance and shadow puppetry. At age 16 Belle also discovered contemporary dance and its wide range of possibilities. Belle has travelled extensively in Asia, Europe, Africa and the USA in diverse productions and festivals including an opera project directed by Peter Sellars at Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles. As founder of the SilverBell Dance Group of Performing Artists, Belle has choreographed and developed many of her own works throughout her career. Currently, she is Vice Dean at the Faculty of Choreography of the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh.