Latest / The Khmer Empire: The Lost Civilization Behind Angkor Wat — Fexingo History / The Royal Ballet of Angkor: Dance and Cosmology in the Khmer Empire
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the stone — the temples, the reservoirs, the inscriptions. But there's another side to Angkor that we haven't touched yet, and it's one of the most beautiful. Luna: What's that? Lucas: Dance. Specifically, the sacred dance tradition that the Khmer Empire turned into a cosmic art form. You see it everywhere at Angkor — those carved apsaras and devata on the walls — but they weren't just decoration. Dance was woven into the fabric of the empire. Luna: The apsaras — those are the celestial nymphs, right? From Hindu mythology. Lucas: Exactly. In Hindu cosmology, apsaras are divine dancers who entertain the gods. The Khmer kings, especially from the 12th century onward, essentially tried to recreate heaven on earth by filling their temples with real, living dancers — thousands of them. And the carvings we see today were like a permanent record of that performance. Lucas: Take Preah Khan, for example — the temple Jayavarman VII built in honour of his father. There's a famous inscription there that lists, among other things, exactly how many dancers were attached to the temple: 615 of them. Luna: Six hundred and fifteen dancers? For one temple? Lucas: Yes — and that was just one of many. The same inscription also mentions 100,000 total attendants for the temple, but 615 of them were specifically dancers. And they weren't just performers — they were considered sacred property of the deity, essentially living offerings who danced as a form of worship and to sustain the cosmic order. Lucas: The scale is mind-boggling. By Jayavarman VII's reign, thousands of dancers were attached to temples across the empire — at Ta Prohm, the Bayon, Banteay Chhmar. And this wasn't unique to the Khmer; you see temple dancers in India and elsewhere. But the Khmer took it to an industrial scale. Luna: So it was an economic institution as much as a religious one. Lucas: Absolutely. These dancers were part of the temple's economy — they were fed, housed, and clothed from temple revenues. They performed on ritual calendars, and their dances told stories from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which the largely illiterate population would absorb through movement and music. It was storytelling, theology, and spectacle all in one. Lucas: And we have a rare eyewitness account of it, from the Chinese diplomat Zhou Daguan, who visited Angkor in the 1290s. He wrote that at royal festivals, 'there are female dancers who perform with great skill, twisting and turning in time to the music.' He also noted that the king himself would watch from a high window. Luna: So the tradition was still going strong centuries after Jayavarman VII. Lucas: It was. And it outlasted the empire itself. When Angkor declined and the capital moved to Phnom Penh, the dance tradition moved with it — adapted into what we now call the Royal Ballet of Cambodia. It's one of the few living threads that connects modern Cambodia directly to the Khmer Empire. Lucas: But the thread almost snapped in the 1970s. Under the Khmer Rouge, dancers were seen as symbols of the old, decadent elite — they were targeted for elimination. Something like 90% of Cambodia's artists and dancers were killed or died during that period. Luna: That's devastating. Lucas: It was a cultural genocide. But a handful survived, and after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, they began to rebuild the tradition. One of the key figures was Princess Buppha Devi, the daughter of King Norodom Sihanouk and a former prima ballerina herself. She spent years reconstructing the repertoire from memory and from fragments of notation. Luna: So she's the reason the dance still exists today. Lucas: Largely, yes. And in 2003, UNESCO recognized the Royal Ballet as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. So the same gestures that were carved on Angkor Wat in the 12th century are still being performed onstage in Phnom Penh. It's a direct line. Lucas: And that line goes back to the devata carvings too — the female figures that are everywhere on Angkorian temples, especially at Banteay Srei. Those aren't exactly apsaras; they're more like goddesses or guardians. But the dancers would have imitated their poses and costumes. The carvings were the ideal. Lucas: Exactly. The temple was the script. And it worked both ways — the carvings captured the dancers, and the dancers brought the carvings to life. It's a really beautiful dialogue between the permanent and the ephemeral. Lucas: If today was actually useful to you, the way these stay ad-free is listener support — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Yeah, and it really does make a difference for keeping this kind of deep dive possible. Lucas: So back to the dancers — one of the most famous scenes at Angkor Wat is the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, where gods and demons pull on a serpent to churn the cosmic ocean. And in that scene, you see apsaras dancing, celebrating the creation of the elixir of immortality. Luna: So dance is literally part of the origin story of the universe, in their cosmology. Lucas: Exactly. And the Khmer kings understood that by sponsoring dance, they were participating in that cosmic story. It wasn't just entertainment — it was a political and spiritual act that reinforced the king's role as the link between heaven and earth. Lucas: There's also a fascinating detail from the Preah Khan inscription — it specifically mentions that the dancers were divided into four groups, each with its own leader. So there was a hierarchy, a chain of command. These weren't just individuals; they were an institution with structure. Luna: Like a dance army. Lucas: In a way, yes. And the costumes they wore — based on the carvings — were incredibly elaborate. Gold ornaments, silk scarves, tall headdresses. It would have been a stunning visual display, especially by torchlight at night. Lucas: The music was also part of it. The orchestra for the royal ballet traditionally includes xylophones, gongs, drums, and a kind of oboe called the sralai. The dancers don't just move to the beat — they move in a vocabulary of codified gestures that each have a meaning. A bend of the fingers can symbolize a flower opening, or love, or anger. Luna: So it's a language as much as a dance. Lucas: Precisely. And the fact that we can still see that language today, after everything — the fall of Angkor, the colonial period, the war, the genocide — is remarkable. It's a testament to the resilience of the people who kept it alive. Lucas: So next time you look at a photo of Angkor Wat and see those graceful figures on the walls, remember — they're not just art. They're a choreography of power, faith, and survival. Luna: And they're still dancing. Lucas: Yes. They really are.