Cambodian Dance

movement and gestures: a deliberate pace; hyper extended elbows, wrists, and fingers; legs deeply flexed at the knee,ankle, and toe joints; the heel up by the sacrum. Each step was a meditation, from heel to sole to metatarsal to one toe at a time. Every performer exhibited a holistic awareness of the body.

The dancers wore headdresses evocative of Angkor Wat as they walked along a line in flat contact with the floor. Against the polyphonic, linear progression of the pin peat ensemble (one of the oldest types of Khmer musical ensembles), the dancers rotated one-legged balances in slow promenade or stood still as statues. Level changes were nearly imperceptible as the dancers' shapes echoed the carvings found on temple walls.

Women performed all of the roles in Cambodian classical dance until the mid-twentieth century,

so postures, gestures, and costuming must convey gender. Artistic Director Proeung Chhieng explained that a feminine aesthetic of flexibility and suppleness are revered in the culture and that aspiring dancers must endure painful exercises during childhood to achieve the necessary flexibility in the wrist and finger joints. One dance that did feature male performers was Robam Tunsaong, a village dance learned and documented at the Royal University of Fine Arts and reworked for theatrical presentation. The dance featured performers in the roles of two oxen, a hunter, a tiger, and a bumble bee. The movement for this rhythmic dance was characterized by a dropped pelvis, a slight pitch in the hips, and extraordinary facility for locomotion in a squat position.

The company later performed the comedic procession dance known as Chhayam. Percussionists and dancers in celebratory mode entered from the house exit doors wearing masks and red scarves. The basic elements of the dance involved clowning, slapstick, flirtation, and a performer impressing the crowd by lifting his drum high above his head with his teeth.

The grand finale was an excerpt from Reamker, the sixteenth-century Khmer version of the Hindu epic Ramayana. The dance featured the four principal characters of Cambodian dance-dramas: the female divinity or princess, the male divinity or prince, the giant or ogre, and the monkey. The dance opened with the monkeys (a role played by men since the mid-twentieth century) in masks and tails, scratching themselves and grooming each other. What ensued was the story of Preah Ream (Prince Rama) and the rescue of his kidnapped wife Neang Seda (Princess Sita) from the evil Krong Reap (Ravana). In spite of the messages inherent in the Ramayana that seem unpalatable to the Western sensibility, such as the notion of trial by fire, the dance was a stunning display of gold and light that bent our extreme notion of virtuosity into something more subtle and exquisite.