Dance is such a sacred art in Cambodia that for over a thousand years now, it is said to have enabled men to converse with the gods. Or should we say women, given that until the twentieth century, classical Cambodian dance was an exclusively female art form. It was an ancient form of “dance theatre”, intimately linked to the royal household. Dancers, with their faces covered in white to conceal any human emotion, dressed in the finest costumes and the most precious fabrics, sewn with gold thread, seem to transcend themselves during the performances of the royal ballet.

With this incantatory dance, they embody a link between the divinities and mankind, manifested in a strange, slow but rhythmic choreography. Their movements seem almost disjointed and unearthly, yet they speak a language to those who know how to decipher it.

This thousand-year-old art does not necessarily mean it has not evolved over time. The whole point of the film was to show, both the ancient origins of this art form and its modern transformation. Ballet is by no means immutable, and the 20th century was a golden age for a genre that is now part of UNESCO’s World Oral and Intangible Heritage List. Under the impetus of Queen Sisowath Kossamak, grandmother to Princess Buppha Devi and to the current king, the royal ballet emerged from the private confines of the palace, shifting its focus from the divinities to mankind, and becoming in the process a highly fashionable tool of Cambodian soft power.

This spectacular production required months of preparation. Xavier de Lausanne’s camera reveals the intimate secrets of rehearsals, giving us an opportunity to understand and admire the symbolism and technicality of the dancers’ movements. More importantly, it tells the story of a genuine fascination: that felt by the sculptor Auguste Rodin when he discovered the dancers of the Royal Cambodian Ballet at the Pré Catelan in 1906, during their very first performance outside the royal palace in Phnom Penh. This encounter resulted in dozens of sketches, reproduced on screen in a stunningly beautiful display. Contemporary dancers choreograph to perfection the poise immortalised by the sculptor, thereby testifying to the remarkable longevity of this dance from ancient times.

However, while all Cambodians dance, not everyone knows the history of this dance. The Khmer Rouge dictatorship is to blame for this. Ruled by an ideology that glorified an agricultural and working-class nation, the country lost an extremely important part of its intellectual, cultural and artistic elite. Accounts show to what extent this art form narrowly escaped oblivion.

The dance’s ethereal delicacy has nevertheless survived, and this is the story that Xavier de Lauzanne tells us. ” This chapter in the history of the Royal Ballet bears a universal significance. It is fascinating to explore the link that exists between art and the identity, resilience and reconstruction of a nation.”