Countywide : Cambodian Community to Celebrate New Year
The county’s Cambodian community will launch New Year’s festivities a week early with a celebration in Santa Ana on Saturday where youths 9 to 18 will perform traditional and folk dances in native Cambodian dress.
The program, open to the public, will be held at Carr Intermediate School, 2120 W. Edinger Ave. in Santa Ana. Doors open at 7 p.m.
Cambodian musicians will accompany the dancers, said Chea Sok Lim, dance coordinator for The Cambodian Family in Santa Ana.
For Orange County’s more than 6,000 Cambodian refugees, this New Year’s celebration begins officially on April 13 and marks the 10th anniversary of the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge, according to Rifka Hirsch, project director for The Cambodian Family, a nonprofit, community-based organization.
It was on the third day of New Year celebrations in 1975 that the Khmer Rouge army invaded the capital, Phnom Penh.
New Year festivities are preceded by a religious observance on the evening of April 12, Hirsch said.
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