It is a vision of astonishing beauty. Graceful women in glittering costumes form a legato flow of anatomy-defying curves and angles. Tied to royalty and central to religious rituals, Cambodia's traditional dance has become an emblem of the country's patrimony. It links modern Cambodians to the ancient Angkor Empire, whose sandstone temples are festooned with bas-relief dancers.

Cambodia's royal dance has long captured the Western imagination, but until recently there was little opportunity to research it. Before 1941, dancers were in the king's sequestered harem. Western studies of the dance were based on very few viewings or on second-string companies that played for tourists. Paul Cravath's 1985 doctoral dissertation, Earth in Flower – only now belatedly published – blew the field open. He meticulously gleaned information from the scattered studies of Cambodian dance and related subjects. Most importantly, he did first-hand research in Phnom Penh in 1975, examining royal archives, watching rehearsals, and interviewing dancers, teachers and scholars. His research was heroic. Cravath remained in war-torn Phnom Penh, despite daily shelling, until a forced evacuation days before the Khmer Rouge victory. Most of his sources – both written and human – perished during the ensuing nightmare.

His study begins by presenting the ancient Cambodian references and surviving myths that involve dancers. He then incorporates a broader context of South and South-East Asian research and religious studies to derive his thesis: Cambodian dance is fundamentally an embodiment of the life-creating tension and communion between the feminine and the masculine principle. Cravath proceeds to offer a history of Cambodian dance from ancient times through the twentieth century. And, finally, he documents the dance, cataloguing gestures, movement patterns, costume elements and repertory – including many dances no longer performed and gone from living memories. This work is invaluable. And the current presentation, including nearly two hundred black-and-white images, is of art-book quality.

Still, Cravath tends to focus on ideas and oral traditions to support his thesis and to dismiss contravening interpretations and oral traditions. As a result, his argument is overstated and lacks nuance. As the first comprehensive study of the field, his work also inevitably incorporates a few lapses. For example, he does not get quite right the Byzantine relationships between dance and politics in the 1930s and 1940s. But those of us carrying Cambodian dance research forward all are standing on his shoulders. This is an essential volume for anyone interested in South-East Asian performance.