Taking a stately step back in time

The splendor of classical Cambodian dance is built from movement detail: tiny flexes of the elbow; barefoot steps in which the heel sets down and then the arch and toes gently curl to touch the floor; balances on one leg in which the body delicately sinks, rises and sways -- always softly, smoothly, effortlessly.

Most of all, Cambodian classicism glories in the sculptural transformation of hands: hands that bend backward in a half-moon curve, fingers that splay like rays of light. Always women’s hands, because even the depiction of male energy needs the refinement of female execution.

On Saturday, these and other hallmarks of an ancient and still luminous cultural heritage were displayed by the Khmer Arts Academy of Long Beach in “Buong Suong: Cambodian Ritual Through Dance and Song” at the Aratani/Japan America Theatre.

Curiously, the company fared best in the riskiest portions of the program: arcane sacred rites invoking peace and prosperity through depictions of divine order. Less successful and, indeed, often rough and prosaic: excerpts from a relatively familiar dance drama about warring opposites that must unite to bring fertility to the world.

Artistic director Sophiline Cheam Shapiro spent much of the evening singing with the excellent seven-member reed and percussion ensemble led by Ho Chan. The music often grew fast and intense just when the dancing became supremely stately and expressively subdued, helping convey a culture in which emotional restraint is highly prized.

“Ream Eyso and Moni Mekhala” portrayed the nadir of that restraint in the crude attempts of a masked giant to intimate the goddess of water. Its summit could be found in the 18-dancer abstraction “Tep Monorom” and, in particular, the Act 1 solos by guest artists Rachana Khieu (“Buong Suong”) and Chamnan Renz (“Tiyae”). Like Shapiro, they learned classical dancing at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh after the catastrophic reign of Khmer Rouge tyranny, and they honored their art Saturday in their sculptural purity and finesse.

That said, it should be noted that the classical Cambodians who toured the U.S. before the Khmer Rouge era always seemed to float imperceptibly above the floor, and this supernatural weightlessness now seems a lost art. Shapiro, the Khmer Arts Academy and their stellar guests can glide superbly.

But float, no. Today, only the ageless dancers carved on the walls of Angkor Wat hold that secret, and all the shimmering golden spectacle that filled the stage Saturday could only hint at the ineffable magic that Cambodian classical dance has yet to regain.