A female dancer

This figure was once installed, together with other sculptures, flanking the now-missing main image in a temple built some nine hundred years ago by the people of one of the kingdoms of Champa in today’s Vietnam. It isn’t certain whether the temple was Buddhist or Hindu.

Dance seems to have been an important part of festivities and religious ceremonies in Champa, as numerous sculptural depictions suggest. This figure’s splayed knee pose was and is common in artistic representations of South and Southeast Asian dance, as well as in current dance practices.