Article

Is My Body My Own?

Author:

Abstract

Keywords: Cambodia, refugee, mixed race, Khmer, dance, music

How to Cite: Lytle, T. (2023) “Is My Body My Own?”, Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies. 42(0). doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/conversations.3657

Violence against Asian Americans, especially Asian American women, is not new, but global events have led to the resurgence of public displays of anti-Asian sentiment. For me, the aftermath of the 2021 mass shooting in Atlanta forced me to reconcile with the anxiety of being and “performing” my Asian-ness in public. Now, we must carry the trauma of being afraid of our bodies, the worry for our mothers and family members, and the reality that our existence is once again met with resistance.

As a mixed-race Cambodian American dancer and performing artist, my body has always been a complicated source of contention—neither Cambodian enough for Cambodian dance, nor legibly “American” enough for commercial success. Racialized notions of Asian bodies in dance have contributed to skewed notions of belonging and acceptance, and therefore have complicated identity politics for mixed-race artists like myself. I have spent my life in art forms that have asked me to manipulate my body to fit into an accepted aesthetic. Has my body ever been my own? Have I been performing “me,” or have I been performing how “they” see me?

Daily instances of racialized violence—racist Zoom bombings, microaggressions, deportations, displacements, and deaths that we learn about in the media—put my emotions into overdrive until I can no longer feel. In this time when we find ourselves fighting against hegemonic notions of belonging, how do we fight the anesthetizing stress of race-based violence?

"Is My Body My Own?"

“Is My Body My Own?” is a recorded poetry piece featuring instrumental music from my 2020 Album Cambodian Child.

Instrumentals: “My Neary Chea Chour (Intro),”1 “Qnoum Kaun Khmer,”2 and “For Her.”

(Full Audio Transcript Below)

Is My Body My Own?

(Audio: Footsteps. Footsteps stop.)

Should I be wearing this?

(Audio: Footsteps walking away)

(Music: “My Neary Chea Chour (Intro)”)

End

Notes

  1. “Neary Chea Chour” is a Cambodian Classical dance piece featuring song lyrics about beautiful young women dancing in a row. “My Neary Chea Chour (Intro)” is my own version of the song’s first verse. This piece is the prelude to “My Neary Chea Chour” which features a feminist critique of an Orientalist male gaze. [^]
  2. “Qnoum Kaun Khmer” (Khmer) translates to “I am a Cambodian child” (English). [^]

Author Biography

Tiffany Lytle is a performing artist and scholar whose work engages with transgenerational memory, cultural identity, and multiraciality in the Cambodian American diaspora. She is an alumnus of University of California, Los Angeles’s (UCLA’s) Asian American Studies Master of Arts program and UCLA’s Southeast Asian Studies Bachelor of Arts program. Lytle is currently a PhD candidate of Theater Dance and Performance Studies at University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). Lytle also teaches courses in UCSB’s Asian American Studies department. Her essay “Cambodian Classical Dance: Authenticity, Affect, and Exclusion” is published in a collection by University of Hawaii Press entitled California Dreaming: Movement and Place in the Asian American Imaginary (2020).

Lytle grew up performing Cambodian classical dance and was a dancer in the Los Angeles-based dance company KPA Fusion Dance Repertoire. In 2018, she and her team of dancers and musicians performed in Refugee Re/Enactments as part of UCLA’s Campus as Canvas Arts Initiative and then in “Qnoum Kaun Khmer/I AM a Cambodian Child” which premiered at Highways Performance Space. In 2019 Lytle became a Critical Refugee Studies Collective grantee, completing her 2020 single “Justice,” which reckons with global responses to the Cambodian genocide. Her album Cambodian Child is available on iTunes, Spotify, and all music-streaming platforms.