The Impermanence of Dance

Dancer at Angkor Wat temple complex, Cambodia

Dance is a devotional union between the divine and the human realms. The human body becomes a medium able to translate into an expression that speaks beyond language and literature.

Ritual dances and architectural forms are intertwined; movement is the meditation of the God living within these architectural forms, and this is known as one of the highest state of worship. Since millennia, Indian temples have been the home to a vast array of such ritualistic performances.

These have then extended to most of Southeast Asia, where dances translate into offering maintaining the harmony with spirits. Dances had been fundamental to societies throughout history, as they embodied a response to political, social and cultural forms of repression.