According to the first royal narrative, a poor couple of fishermen named Bun and his wife Neang Oma, lived near Savathy district.

Arriving, seeing that the deer was very good, he brought the buckskin and antlers to the king who would be worthy of this great hunting trophy.

All the devas then marched across the Anoma River to build a pagoda, fulfilling their wishes with the music of the festival waiting in the streets.

While French ethnologist Éveline Porée-Maspero noted that since 1936, the procession had been abandoned in some villages of the province of Siem Reap, the effort led by Minister of Culture Chheng Phon contributed to the renewed popularity of the dance after it had been totally eradicated by the Khmer Rouge.

According the French ethnologist Éveline Porée-Maspero, "the trot (...) is the walking representation of the killing of a deer by two masked characters, after it has been hunted down theatrically.

They then go to Angkor Wat, where they mime the drama as an offering to the Buddha, are blessed by the monks, and finish their trek on the banks of the Baray where the local Khmer people come to picnic on the last day of the New Year celebrations.

In addition to these figures, we see one or two dancers whose hands are lengthened by a kind of fake nails made of small braided rattan fingers whose long tips end in a red cotton pompom.

[8]The number of artists participating in a trot dance varies depending on people's wishes, but there are generally 16, including four main dancers, two women and two men, a deer representing the forces of evil, a "Dangdol" (person carrying a musical instrument), four "Kanhche" (person clowning here and there), two giants, two monsters, two drummers, a hunter and a few others.

From the royal court of Angkor, where it is still observed with more pomp and circumstance, the trot dance was folklorized as it became a popular rite of the Khmer New Year across the country.

[11] Performing the trot dance is commonly understood as a way to get rid of the bad and increase good fortune for the upcoming New Year, according to traditional beliefs.

The dance and the deer sacrifice may also represent a propitiatory rite imploring for the rain to fall again at the end of the dry season.

According to a 1949 report by Reverend Iv Tuot for the Commission des Moeurs et Coutumes du Cambodge, the trot dance was already acknowledged as a ceremony imploring rain.