Sophiline Cheam Shapiro

Sophiline Cheam Shapiro (; born 1967) is a Cambodian dancer, choreographer, and educator.

Early life At the age of eight, Shapiro was forced to live in the countryside of Cambodia after her family was evacuated from the city by the Khmer Rouge. When the Cambodian Civil War had ended, the national School of Fine Arts was reopened, where Shapiro was one of the first students to learn from the masters of dance who had survived both the end of the court and the later violence of Pol Pot, who specially targeted artists. Being among the first generation of classically trained Cambodian dancers to graduate from the School of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, she devoted herself to master the complex and intricate gestures and movements of classical Cambodian dance. In 2002, along with her husband, she launched the Khmer Arts Academy to teach a new generation of Cambodian-Americans the traditional art and culture of Cambodia.

Career

Shapiro's choreography has been credited with infusing the classical form with new ideas.

Shapiro has received a number of honors, including Asia 21, Creative Capital, Durfee, Guggenheim and Irvine Dance Fellowships, as well as the Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture. She was a member of the first generation to train at and graduate from Phnom Penh's School of Fine Arts after the fall of Pol Pot, and she has studied dance ethnology at undergraduate and graduate levels at UCLA's Department of World Arts & Cultures. She is a recipient of a 2009 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. She was also named a 2009 Fellow by United States Artists.

Personal life In 1991, she married John Shapiro, and the couple settled in Los Angeles.

Achievements 2006: Winner of Nikkei Asia Prize: Culture Prize