Poster image for DIGGING TO CAMBODIASar­ita So revis­its her Toi Whakaari solo show, turn­ing it onto a longer explor­a­tion of mak­ing memory and his­tory telling. “Through words, move­ment and songs from Cam­bod­i­a’s 1960’s rock era – Dig­ging to Cam­bod­ia is a let­ter to her past, present and future self, it asks us all “What is worth remem­ber­ing?””

So wears a long red dress with embroid­ery across the bod­ice. She tells us about Cam­bod­i­an sing­ers in the early 1970s who were com­bin­ing West­ern Rock with their own music­al tra­di­tions. Two pro­jec­ted backup dan­cers join her as she sings one of these songs. She tells us of her dream to be an apsara dan­cer when she was young­er while demon­strat­ing the del­ic­ate hand pos­i­tions and float­ing move­ment of the form. She digs into the air while telling us that journ­al­ists, act­iv­ists and artists were among the mil­lions killed dur­ing the Khmer Rouge regime. So is an enga­ging per­former who keeps our atten­tion as she darts around the stage.

The show is struc­tured in lay­ers with repe­ti­tion of action. Each lay­er takes us deep­er into her invest­ig­a­tion and closer to the heart of the story – her fam­ily. I like the way the 12 years between the first ver­sion and this ver­sion are acknow­ledged. She has had anoth­er 12 years to con­sider how her fam­ily has coped with death and rebirth and her think­ing has evolved in those years. 

At one point she says some­thing like ‘I’m always dig­ging – dig­ging for treas­ures, dig­ging for know­ledge, dig­ging for truth – because I’m curi­ous.’ I’m glad she has shared her curi­os­ity with us. Won­der­ful.