Dance, photography coalesce in exhibit

Photographer Paul Mongillo spent time in Cambodia to capture images of work done by Dancing Across Borders, which teaches Gabrielle Roth’s 5Rhythms — a meditative dance practice — to children there, and relief work being conducted by the Cambodia-based Children and Love Association. (Courtesy Paul Mongillo)

April 10, 2008
Molly Gilmore For The Olympian
http://www.theolympian.com/living/story/414726.html

Photographer Paul Mongillo of Olympia loves to travel in developing countries. He loves to take photographs. And he loves to dance.

Though his trip to Cambodia last year combined all three of those things, he knew up front that this trip would not be like most of his travels.

"I love meeting people and I'm always on the prowl for photographs," Mongillo said. "But this trip had nothing to do with me. It was about helping other people, so it was completely different.

That's why I fell in love with so many people, and that's why it was such a positive experience. These people have come into my heart and they are never going to go away."

Mongillo spent a month in the Mesang District, the poorest part of Cambodia. He photographed work being done by Dancing Across Borders, which teaches Gabrielle Roth's 5Rhythms — a meditative dance practice — to children there, and relief work being conducted by the Cambodia-based Children and Love Association, a relief agency that helps families in the province with skills and microloans to help them create better lives.

While there, he took about 800 pictures and collected "1,000 stories," he said.

An avid 5Rhythms dancer at Waves Studio in Olympia, Mongillo read about Dancing Across Borders on the Web site www.moveandbemoved.net. When he sought more information, he discovered that the organization was one woman, Lucie Nerot of Paris. She invited him to come along on her next trip to document her work.

He spent the mornings photographing and videotaping her work and participating in the dance classes. He said his presence helped the boys get more involved.

In the afternoons, he photographed the work of Children and Love, which aims to address the poverty in the Mesang District and help keep the district's children with their parents. (Many end up living in the streets of Phnom Penh after their parents send them there to earn a living.)
He and Nerot stayed with a family in the tiny town of Chi Pooch.

"I'd visited developing countries, but I'd never had the opportunity to stay in a rural area for any length of time," he said. "I lived with a family in a village that had no restaurants, no hotels, no running water, no electricity. The meals were cooked over an open fire.

"It was an amazing experience to stay put and get to know and fall in love with so many people. It was hard to leave."

If falling in love with a village sounds unlikely, you haven't met Mongillo.

"It was a quarter-mile walk from one side of the village where we were staying to the CLA office," he said. "There was one man I connected with. I'd sit with him every day coming or going. He couldn't speak any English, and I knew about three words of Khmer, but somehow we became friends."

The men communicated with hand gestures and drawings. "He would bring things out of his hut to show me," Mongillo said. "I don't know his name, and he doesn't know my name, but I will never forget him."

Mongillo has an array of photographs from the trip. The most striking contrast is between the stark black-and-white images of street children and the colorful, joy-filled pictures of children dancing the 5Rhythms. Yet those children are for the most part all in the same situation — one of grim poverty in a country where much cultural and practical knowledge was lost in the Killing Fields.

"The street children broke my heart," Mongillo said. "In Phnom Penh, there were lots of street kids around the Mekong River. I tried to wake one up one morning so I could give her money so she could eat. I couldn't wake her, and I thought she was dead. I rolled up her sleeve and put my hand on her arm, and she had a pulse, but I couldn't wake her up. I think it's because the kids probably were afraid to sleep in the dark and they wouldn't fall asleep till the sun started to come up."

But Mongillo also saw hope: children from the street returning to their villages, families learning to live better lives. "I have a photograph of a proud couple in front of two houses," he said. "One is a bamboo shack. They got training and a microloan of $30 from the CLA. Three years later, they have plenty of pigs and a hard-sided house right next to the other one."