DANBURY -- Anandita Nanda dances in precise movements. The way she lifts her foot, the way she bends her fingers, the way her torso swivels is all an exact art. Nanda learned to dance in the Orissi ...

Cambodian master classical dancer Penh Yom walks between her teenage students, painstakingly adjusting a bent-back finger here and the tilt of a head there, as she passes on a centuries-old art form.

When the music starts, Rasika Kumar is like a flower opening her petals as first the hands, the fingers, the body, the feet and most of all her eyes begin a story. She is at once a seductress and a ...