The Meaning of Hand Gestures in Khmer Classical Dance
Known in Khmer as Robam Preah Reach Trop (literally ‘dances of royal wealth’), traditional Khmer dancing is an integral part of the national culture. The curvy-waisted dancers winding across bas-reliefs in Angkor Wat solidify its importance in the national psyche, showing that this traditional dance form has been around for over a thousand years. The dances often tell the stories of ancient myths involving celestial wars, giants and beautiful peacemaking goddesses.
Along with the glittering headdresses and slow, graceful movements, the expressive hand gestures are the most iconic part of Khmer classical dance. The hand shapes, in combination with feet and arm gestures, are crucial in expressing the story of the largely silent dances – a kind of artistic sign language. These hand movements are derived from Indian ‘mudras’, or gestures. As well as the positioning of the fingers, movements of the wrists are also expressive of specific meanings.
Sreynoch is a traditional dancer at Cambodian Living Arts, an organisation preserving traditional Cambodian art forms. Although Sreynoch is just 24 years old, she has already been dancing for 13 years. “There are 1,500 hand gestures in Khmer classical dance,” she says. “It takes a dancer over five years to learn them all, and about two hours to show all the hand gestures in a row.”
“It was really hard to learn because you have to concentrate and meditate on each hand gesture,” she continues. “Our hands became so flexible because we practiced warm-ups every day. You have to coordinate a gesture with facial expressions and movements so that the audience can fully understand [its meaning].”
Sreynoch demonstrates her favourite gesture: love. Her hands draw in and cross her chest as her head dips demurely. Female dancers have a different language of signals from men. When a female dancer cries, she elegantly traces a tear down her cheek, whereas a man presses his hand to his forehead in strife.
Giants and monkeys are other recurring characters with their own body language, movements and gestures. Monkeys move quickly and with their whole body, in sharp contrast to the stately, centred grace of the female characters.
In classical dance, a gesture changes meaning depending on its placement and movement. The ‘jeeb’ – a hand position created by pressing the thumb and forefinger together and fanning the fingers out – can express shyness when pressed to the mouth, or to swim or laugh, amongst many other meanings. The jeeb is such an icon of Khmer dance that it was placed on UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008, under the umbrella of the Royal Ballet of Cambodia and Khmer shadow theatre.
Sometimes gestures come in a sequence, such as the plant series. It begins with the dancer arching her forefinger for ‘planting’; as it swoops to an upwards point like a shoot of a plant, it becomes ‘growing’. The thumb and forefinger meet and the other fingers arch backwards to symbolise the plant growing young leaves.
We follow the series through continuous hand gestures as it becomes a flower, and eventually ripe fruit. The series of movements is typical of traditional dance: despite telling fantastical creation stories, it’s very much connected to nature, the seasons, and the realities of everyday rural Cambodia.
Sreynoch says that she can relate to the characters, too, even though they are gods and goddesses. Their actions are “similar to what we do in daily life, with some artistic additions. In the Apsara dance, the women go to the park and look at the flowers. In real life, we also go and visit parks and be happy,” she says. The classical hand gestures combine the mythical and the everyday: a living part of Khmer culture.
