Biography
Phuon graduated from Conservatoire National de Danse in Avignon (France) in 1985, after which she spent one year under full scholarship at Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal before moving to New York in 1987 to enroll in the certificate program of the Alvin Ailey American Dance School.
Ms. Phuon’s career as a dancer spans decades. She has performed internationally with Elisa Monte Dance Company (1989 -1995), Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project (1995-2002), Martha Clarke (1997-1999), Joachim Schloemer (2002-2003), Yvonne Rainer (2010-2022) and in her own work (2018 – 2023). During her tenure with White Oak Dance Project, she has worked with an array of choreographers, including Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Deborah Hay, Mark Morris, John Jasperse, Tere O’Connor, Neil Greenberg, and Meg Stuart, among others. One big regret is having passed on the opportunity to work with Meg Stuart in Belgium!
Ms. Phuon’s choreographic work has been commissioned and presented at the Baryshnikov Arts Centre, New Haven’s Festival of Arts and Ideas, the Spoleto Dance Festival in Charleston, Guggenheim Works and Process, the Singapore Da:ns festival, Danspace Project in New York, The Hopkins Center for the Arts, and the Kaatsbaan Cultural Center. Among them, Khmeropedies III / Source: Primate earned the support and endorsement of His Majesty King Sihamoni. She is the recipient of grants from the Fondation de France, Un Monde par Tous, and the Asian Cultural Council. Awards and fellowships include the Richard Porter Leach Fellowship, the Baryshnikov Arts Center’s Martha Duffy Memorial Fellowship, and a 2019 Jerome Robbins Dance Research Fellowship, all from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. One of seven authorized transmitters of Yvonne Rainer’s work, she has taught workshops and set Rainer’s work in major exhibitions in France, Japan, China, and Sweden—most notably Yvonne Rainer’s Performative Exhibition at Shunju-za Theater (Kyoto) and Yvonne Rainer and Wen Hui: Dance Only Exists When It Is Performed at the Inside-Out Art Museum (Beijing).
Phuon wrote a chapter on postmodern dance in Milestones in Dance in the USA (Routledge, 2022), an issue on the Cambodian dance diaspora for Dance Index (Winter 2022-23), and assisted Yvonne Rainer in gathering material for Nevertheless: A Choreographic Workbook (Yale University Press, 2025).