Young students at Phnom Penh's Fine Arts School practice the slow, graceful classical Khmer dance ...

Young students at Phnom Penh's Fine Arts School practice the slow, graceful classical Khmer dance style based on the movements of the 'naga' snake, as their teacher adjusts one girl's pose. Students start learning dance at the age of six or eight and can take decades to perfect the thousands of subtle movements associated with Cambodia's two styles of dancing - the court or royal dance, and the epic dance, depicting scenes from the Hindu epic, the Ramayana. The steps and hand movements (or 'chbai'), virtually identical to those depicted in bas reliefs at Angkor Wat, are performed to the rhythmic accompaniment of a 'pin peat' orchestra of gongs, drums, xylophone, oboes and singers and represent an almost unbroken line of court music dating back over a thousand years. That line was broken with the coming of the autogenocidal Khmer Rouge in 1975 when any artisans or performers were viewed as representatives of the feudal Khmer society they were attempting to purge, and almost 90 percent of Cambodia's dance masters and musicians were systematically executed. Although some dancers survived, Cambodia's musical traditions were never notated, being passed on through training, and while some styles and movements have been lost forever, the work of ethnomusicologists such as Australian Bill Lobban has ensured that what is known will survive. In 1994, a year after the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) mission departed, the revival of Khmer dance was strong enough to start mounting Ramayana performances, giving many Cambodians their first glimpse of a part of their own heritage.