The danced face’s fixed rictus marks off skill from expressed feeling.

Evidence

Whatever the eyes do, the mouth is fixed in a rictus that signals the separation of the dance from the direct expression of anguish or anger. From a complex set of perspectives, this is the devaddsi as living doll, stunningly expert in her art. Here the representation of lasya is indeed again a skill, distanced by the work of the screen. — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader, 2078