Angkor Apsara

An apsara is a member of a class of celestial beings in Hindu and Buddhist culture. The apsaras are described to be beautiful, youthful and elegant, and are said to be able to change their shape at will. There are two types of apsaras, laukika and daivika. They are superb in the art of dancing, and often wives of the gandharvas, the court musicians of the king of the gods, Indra. The apsaras reside in the palaces of the gods and entertain them by dancing to the music made by the Gandharvas. They are sometimes compared to the Muses of ancient Greece, with each of the twenty six apsaras at Indra's court representing a distinct aspect of the performing arts. The apsaras often descend on the Earth to seduce sages and prevent them from achieving divine powers. Apsaras represent an important motif in the stone bas-reliefs of the Angkorian temples in Cambodia (8th–13th centuries AD), however, not all female images are considered to be apsaras. In harmony with the Indian association of dance with apsaras, Khmer female figures that are dancing or are poised to dance are considered apsaras; female figures, depicted individually or in groups, who are standing still and facing forward in the manner of temple guardians or custodians are called devatas. 

In his magnificent book "La Côte de Jade", Francis de Croisset writes: "All have the same hieratic pose, but their faces differ and also their ornaments. The sculptors who love them have invented them every time, the image can be the one of a woman they loved and whose they reproduced the profile or smile ... ... They are no longer frescoes and statues, they are dreams, desires, homage in stone. In front of his Apsara, each artist had to say to himself, mine will be the most beautiful. 

I had the chance to go often to Cambodia to work, but I never had the chance to go to Angkor to visit the temples and see the Apsaras. I have to go back one day