By: Christina Herrmann

“Foreign fingers,” giggled my native Thai dance instructor as I curled my unwilling hands in mimicry of her artistic pose. My stiff fingers were mute, but her elegant ones communicated shyness, romantic love and cunning.

Thanks to my American Sign Language classes, I have always known hands could talk.

Thai hands dance.

“Step forward, step, roll back, bend those fingers, and bend bend bend!” Concentrating hard, I willed my fingers to warp back towards my hand. My classmates, forty Thai twelve-year-olds, were already flexible proficients. Beautiful and agile children usually begin training at the age of six to eight, and already my classmates moved with adult grace.

Khon Thai is a proud centerpiece of Thai arts, harking back to the bejeweled courts of Ayuddya, Thailand’s ancient capital. The story is an Indian epic, that of Rama, the hero-god, and his battle with the ten-headed demon Ravana. To reclaim Ayuddya and his abducted wife, Rama presses his monkey army against the demon forces of Ravana.

For such a violent clash of deities, one would expect a little more, well, movement. Khon Thai dancers “hold their bodies upright from the neck to the hips, moving up and down using only their knees and stretching to the rhythm of the music. The arms, hands [and ankles] are held in curves and different angles,” and the precision of these angles relative to the body lends the dance its subtle beauty.

Even a dancer’s face is enigmatic, shielded with one of ten different styles of ornate mask. A ghoulish but theatrical snarl on a mask suggests a demon, for example, while a heroic smile depicts Rama.

Khon Thai rewards the observant. An ordinary audience member might complacently note that Rama’s legions are always dressed in green. An extraordinary audience member would notice that the slight upturn of a foot’s bare sole indicates aggression and foreshadows battle.

For a traditional Thai dancer, emotion and expression are in the smallest details. Beautiful motion is not rapid and free, but instead patterned and achingly patient.

After hours in the hot Thai classroom, my hands were ready to dance. Keenly sensing the enchantment of the music, I shaped a fan of fingers. “Suoy, suoy!” proclaimed my dance instructor. Beautiful, beautiful.

Without acrobatics, pirouettes, or even excess motion, Khon Thai dancers articulate war and trace themes of love and courage with patient fingertips.