Phnom Penh: The village festival has postponed the last week of its program before the Khmer New Year celebrations begin early next week.
In the last week of 11 and 12 April, the 12th Annual Village Festival was held at Wat Swei Float, the birthplace of the Wat Swei Floating Theatre Arts, which was inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on 28 November 2018.
The village festival organizers said, "The art forms that will be performed on the evening of April 11 are Classical Drama Female Wat Kien Swei Outdoor from 6pm onwards."
Wat Kien Swei Noi is a form of classical singing and dancing theater whose characteristics are similar to Khmer traditional martial arts, including traditional music, costumes, skirts, veils, masks, arms, and feet, and the performers are all female, even male characters, and have two male characters as the bearers of heavy tasks.
In this classical drama, there are four characters, namely the female character, the heroine character, the giant character, and the monkey character, all of which are played by female characters, except for the clown and the female character, which is played by male humans.
They said that the program on April 12 in Kampong Thom Province is a form of Yike Theatre that is one of the oldest in the Khoi indigenous community of Kampong Thom Province.
This Yikkei drama is also similar to the Khmer Yikei Theater in terms of the dialogue and singing of the characters, but what we can notice is that which is Yikkey and which is Yikekhe Khmer is based on language and dance.
It is worth mentioning that the struggle of the Indigenous Yike Theatre Troupe has received the opportunity to perform on the big stage for the first time, taking the drama "The King".
The indigenous Yike of this region of Kampong Thom Province had a fate no different from other theaters during the war, being almost completely destroyed, both in terms of human resources, songs, lyrics in the Khoi language, as well as dance.
According to the description, the organizers of the village festival program said: "Today, the theater troupe has approximately more than 27 members, which is quite a lot, but the theater troupe still faces a lack of performance market, having performed mostly in local villages and has only come to perform in Phnom Penh three times."
Khmer Opera in general has become a World Cultural Property of Humanity from UNESCO.
The origins of the Wat Swei Float Opera are many, and the people of Wat Swei Float have a strong tradition of performing the Opera to pay tribute to the Blessed Sacrament every year after New Year's Eve.
Hundreds of days: During these two days, the village festival program also includes a variety of Khmer folk games and mixed traditional dances for the villagers to visit, which are located in the floating wat compound.
The Village Festival is organized by PlerngKob Lantern with Cambodia Water and co-sponsored by Chip Mong Bank, KIZZ, and IZE.
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