? Sophiline Cheam Shapiro remembers the night 20 years ago when she was part of a troupe’s performance of traditional Khmer dance in a remote northeastern village, enjoying a new freedom after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime that had banned all art and culture.

One elderly man looked in awe at Shapiro’s costume and her 15-year-old face covered in makeup. “He couldn’t believe his eyes,” Shapiro said. “He thought we had arrived from another world.”

Now, Shapiro is taking classical Khmer dance to another audience that is likely to be just as surprised: Her Khmer adaptation of “Othello” will be performed March 1-3 as part of the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

The performance will be the first time that the dance  titled “Samritechhak,” or “Dark Prince”  is seen outside Cambodia. It is also slated to tour early next year in the United States. Dancers from the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh make up most of the cast.

The sinewy movements of Cambodian ballerinas in colorful, elaborate costumes will not be immediately recognizable as Shakespeare. But English and Chinese subtitles  projected on a screen above the stage  will help audiences follow the 90-minute dance while a chorus backed by traditional Cambodian instruments sings Khmer-language ballads.

“It’s an adaptation that acts as a bridge,” Shapiro said during a break in rehearsals at the Royal University of Fine Arts. “It enables Cambodians to experience a classic Western story in a form they know, and allows foreigners access to the intricacies of Khmer dance through a drama they are familiar with.”

The story is set in ancient Cambodia rather than 17th-century Cyprus and Venice. Samritechhak represents Othello, but he is a half-man, half-giant mythical general, not a Moor military commander.

Related themes

Khmer dance was devastated during the Khmer Rouge’s drive to create an agrarian utopia. More than 90 percent of the nation’s dancers were believed to have been among the 1.7 million people whose deaths have been blamed on the regime’s rule from 1975 to 1979.

Shapiro, then a child, worked on a farm and recalls singing to herself to keep her spirits up and to help her forget her empty stomach. After the regime’s fall, she became a dance apprentice, practicing daily to master the intricate movements of hands, feet, arms and legs that personify classical Khmer dance.

“I’ve even got a scar,” she said, pulling up her sleeve to show where the fingernail of a “strict” teacher was pressed into her arm as she was held in a difficult position.

She soon became a rising star. Then, in 1990, she met her husband, John Shapiro, a writer from Los Angeles, and moved to California.

Today, Shapiro, a 35-year-old mother of twin boys, is contributing to the art form’s rebirth by running a performing arts program in Long Beach, Calif.

She grew attached to “Othello” in a literature class in 1995. She was able to adapt the tale of jealousy, betrayal and power with the help of a $30,000 grant from the James Irvine Foundation.

“It’s a story with universal themes that relate to Cambodia, especially how women fall victim to the foolishness of their men,” she said.

Shapiro altered the ending with her Samritechhak begging for punishment rather than forgiveness after realizing his folly.

She said it’s a message pertinent to her country’s struggle with the surviving Khmer Rouge leadership. No one has appeared before a court to account for the atrocities of the radical Maoists, and Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government has granted freedom to many former Khmer Rouge leaders in exchange for loyalty.

Cultural broker

Shapiro’s dance version of “Othello” debuted in Phnom Penh in 2000.

More than 35 artists will travel to Hong Kong for the festival performance. The trip is sponsored by the festival and UNESCO Cambodia since the cash-strapped Cambodian government provides little funding for the arts.

Shapiro wants to remind Cambodians and foreigners that Cambodia is emerging from the grim years of civil strife.

“I see myself as a cultural broker,” she said. “Cambodia is not only about the killing fields. Some things represent pride, not shame and embarrassment.”