Lanica Angpak is a dance artist and activist with over 20 years of experience in both teaching and performing Cambodian Folk and Classical Dance. Lanica comes from a family of artists, her grandmother worked with textiles, her father with jewelry, her sister is a writer, and her mother a dancer. With such a multi-talented background, Lanica approaches art, specifically her artform, with the belief that it is both an important part of preserving her cultural identity as well as a crucial means of creative expression.
Lanica Angpak is the founder and director of Cambodian American Girls Empowering, a Philadelphia-based non-profit dance organization that uses art as a form of activism, seeking to foster sustainable and accessible relationships across generations within communities of color. In this role, she dedicates herself to ensuring that young people have access to the tools they need to create impactful change, with art functioning as a tool for social change. Lanica is also the founder of Khmer, Again, a non-profit organization dedicated to reclaiming lost Khmer American identity through photography, research, and community archive work. Through Khmer, Again, Lanica has worked with Cambodian American communities across the United States, collecting and documenting artwork and photographs.
Among her many accomplishments, she currently works for the City of Philadelphia by serving on Governor Tom Wolf’s Advisory Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs, and leads the AAPI Arts Collective for Pennsylvania. She is also the recipient of the Leeway Foundation’s Transformation Award in 2015, and in 2019, earned their Arts & Change Grant.
