The new monarch of Cambodia was once a dance-crazy youngster whose passion for ballet took him all the way to Prague for 13 years of rigorous training with the best, steeping himself in Czech language and culture in the process.
"Norodom Sihamoni was my first partner at the Prague conservatoire," recalls Hana Vlacilova, later prima ballerina of Czechoslovakia:
"We danced a pas de deux together from Chaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty. We were about 14 or 15 at the time."
"He was very modest, very kind, he always wanted to be helpful and keep everybody happy," said Vlacilova, now artistic director of Prague's Laterna Magica Theatre:
"He was just one of us, nobody thought of him as being the son of a king." His teachers recall how the future king of Cambodia steeped himself in Czech culture, reading voraciously, going to the theatre, a fan of local pop culture.
Born in 1953, Norodom Sihamoni arrived in 1962, aged nine, in the capital of what was then communist Czechoslovakia.
Only the Czech embassy in Paris had responded positively to a request by his parents for suitable training for the boy.
His sojourn in Czechoslovakia covered the period of the Prague Spring in 1968 when communist reformers very briefly tried to introduce a new liberal communism with a human face, only to be crushed by Soviet tanks in August of that year.
The prince resided at the Cambodian embassy in Prague, attending a city primary school with local pupils.
Thereafter he went to the dance conservatoire and to the School of Music, Ballet and Dramatic Art.
He even appeared in public in Prague, aged 11, dancing at the National Theatre in Chaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker. "Successful pupils, and especially boys who are fewer in numbers than girls, get their chance to appear in performance relatively early, appearing perhaps as pages or in similar roles," his former teacher Marketa Kytyrova explained.
Speaking in her apartment here, Kytyrova, now retired, thumbed through recently published pictures of the now 50 year-old monarch.
"That's him alright," she said: "I remember that mouth, that nose... but he didn't have that wrinkle then." "He was mad about dancing from a very young age," she recalled: "He loved it from the very bottom of his heart." The new king must also be the only current reigning sovereign able to speak fluent Czech:
"It was incredible the way he acquired Czech - even with a Prague accent."
Norodom Sihamoni also developed an interest in teaching dance.
"He wanted to raise the level of dance instruction in his country," said Kytyrova. "He was even planning to introduce aspects of Czech teaching."
"I'm convinced he could still do so," she insisted: "If you love something that much, you never forget it."
The prince completed his Prague studies in 1975 with good marks, his special subject: "Use of classical European dance in the dance culture of Cambodia." During his Prague sojourn the future king became absorbed by local culture: "He loved our culture, he read Czech, he went to the theatre and he also loved our popular songs," Kytyrova recalled.
He returned to Prague during the 1990s while serving as his country's ambassador to UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. On that visit, he revealed that the popular music of one communist regime had helped him through the rigours of another.
His favourite Czech pop songs had been a comfort during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 "Killing Fields" regime, when as many as two million Cambodians died.
Norodom Sihamoni was held under house arrest in his country during that period.
"I'm sure he enjoyed the best years of his life here," said Kytyrova: "I still have a picture of that little lad before me... and now he's a king."
Comments
Comments are closed.