This TED Talk features interdisciplinary artist Primsa Dunaouk, recorded live at TED 2017.

Rubam Kbchbjbjbjuran, where the art of Kmai classical dance is more than a thousand years old.

It was developed as a prayer and movement for rain and fertility,

and a prosperity that this meant for an agricultural society.

Dancers, who were both men and women,

were offered to temples where they served as living bridges between heaven and earth.

Their dancing bodies carried the prayers of the people up to the gods,

and the will of the deities was delivered back through them to the people and the land.

There are a lot of curves in Kmai dance.

Our backs are arched, our knees are bent,

our toes are curled, our elbows are hyper-f arched, our knees are bent, our toes are curled,

our elbows are hyperflexed,

and our fingers are curved backwards.

All of these curves create a serpentine impression,

and this is important because before the introduction of major religions,

Kmai's and people all over the world practiced animism.

Serpents were especially important in this belief system

because in their fluid, curvilinear movement,

they mimic the flow of water.

So to invoke the serpent in your dancing body then was to conjure the image of rivers cutting across the earth,

inspire the flow of life-giving waters.

As you can see then, Kmai classical dance is a transformation of nature, of both the physical

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