Jeanne Cuisinier, the Ethnologist of Indochina and the Khmer Royal Ballet
She earned a diploma in Malay in 1929, then at 42 set out for Kelantan, and later for the Mường of Tonkin. Before those two missions, Jeanne Cuisinier put her name to the revised and expanded edition of one of the standard books on Cambodian royal dance.
An ethnologist trained by Mauss and Rivet
Jeanne Cuisinier was born on 30 October 1890 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. She began in literature and published, among other things, a study of Jules Laforgue. She then travelled to Madagascar, Indochina, Siam and Java.
In the late 1920s she changed course. She studied Malay at the École des langues orientales and graduated in 1929. She joined the Institut d'ethnologie in 1930, then the École pratique des hautes études in 1934. Her teachers were Marcel Mauss and Paul Rivet. She belongs to the first generation of professional women ethnologists in France.
Danses cambodgiennes: a book on the Khmer royal ballet
Cambodia entered her work through dance. In 1927 the London journal Indian Arts and Letters published her article on the gestures of the Cambodian ballet. The same year, Danses cambodgiennes appeared in Saigon: a text by Samdech Chaufea Veang Thiounn, minister of the Palace, illustrated by Sappho Marchal. Jeanne Cuisinier took it up, revised it and expanded it. The 1930 edition, printed in 2,000 copies, carries a preface by Governor-General Pierre Pasquier and a dedication to King Monivong.
Pierre Pasquier presents the work as the first written by a Cambodian on the subject. He hopes it will help readers decipher the smile of the apsaras of Angkor. The book ties the dances to the reign of Jayavarman II, between 802 and 869, so nearly eleven centuries, and points to poses on the Bayon bas-reliefs that dancers still reproduce.
The sources consulted do not record a research stay by Jeanne Cuisinier in Cambodia. Her link with the kingdom runs first of all through this book.
From palace to stage: training, costumes and gestures
The book follows the life of the ballet. Girls were offered to the king by their parents, and some came forward on their own. They received an advance of at least 100 piastres, then a monthly wage that started at 6 piastres. The exercises turned hard around age seven. The first lessons took place on a Thursday, a day placed under the protection of the spirit of dance. To loosen stiff wrists and ankles, teachers massaged them with morning dew gathered in the royal garden.
Each cadence had its study time: three months for the slow cadence, two for the fast one, six for that of Prince Ngos, which requires handling a magic cane. Training ended with a ceremony in which the pupils tried on the masks. Ten monks recited prayers the evening before, and offerings to the spirits included pigs' heads, poultry and parched rice.
The book counts, at the Phnom Penh palace, eight dance mistresses and 106 dancers, plus two clowns, the only men in the troupe. Female roles never wear a mask. Costumes were costly: the gold crown of a king or deity is put at 800 piastres, the jewels of the role at over 2,000, the whole outfit at over 3,800. The king's costume is the same as the one worn at the sovereign's coronation. The princess costume is used by young Cambodian women for the hair-cutting ceremony and for marriage.
One chapter deals with gestures. It compares Khmer hand poses with the 28 gestures of the Indian treatise Abhinaya Darpana and points out what the dancers changed, notably the backward bend of the fingers. It also notes that the gestures pass from teacher to pupil without a written text, and that the performers cannot always explain their meaning. One page covers yike, a popular theatre that came from Siam around 1876, under Norodom.
The volume closes with the story of Prince Ngos, from a translation by Suzanne Karpelès. Raised by a giantess, Ngos lives behind the mask of a Forest Man. The youngest of the seven princesses of Samal throws him her garland and marries him despite the king's anger. Set fishing and hunting trials, he supplies fish and gazelles to his six brothers-in-law, who pay him for each favour with a piece of nose or an ear.
Kelantan, radio and the Mường: two field missions
In 1932 the French Ministry of National Education sent her on an ethnological and linguistic mission to Malaya. She was 42. She stayed eighteen months in the state of Kelantan, in the north-east of the peninsula. She spoke Malay. She met sultans and princes in their palaces, peasants in the villages, forest peoples. She was the first French ethnologist to specialise in the region.
She drew from it Danses magiques de Kelantan (1936) and, later, Le théâtre d'ombres à Kelantan (1957). She presented her findings in London in 1934, before the Royal Asiatic Society. Between 1934 and 1938 she also told the story of her fieldwork in a series of radio talks. On air, she questioned the racial and colonial prejudices of her time.
From 10 April 1937 to 10 December 1938 she led a mission among the Mường in Tonkin with Lucienne Delmas. It gave her the thesis she wrote in 1943 and published in 1946: Les Mường, géographie humaine et sociologie, 618 pages.
Sumangat, shadow theatre and collections
In 1951 Gallimard published Sumangat, l'âme et son culte en Indochine et en Indonésie, with a preface by Louis Massignon. The same year saw La danse sacrée en Indochine et en Indonésie.
She brought back more than 1,300 objects, especially rich on shadow theatre and masked performance in the Indo-Malay world. Most are now at the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. Her photographs, often captioned in her own hand, are held by the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle.
Yogyakarta, Madagascar and a prize in her name
In 1952 Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta invited her to teach ethnology. She stayed until 1955. Extracts from her journals of Malaya (1933) and Indonesia (1952-1955) were published in 1999. She ended her career at the University of Madagascar.
She died in Paris on 19 April 1964, aged 73. A bequest from her funds an Inalco prize for the best French-language work on Indonesia. Her book on Cambodian dance was reissued in Phnom Penh by the Buddhist Institute, in 1956 and again in 1981.
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