Today we are just relaxing. The weather is gloriously sunny and warm and we walk to the bar area to have some lunch. We return to the Temple Club which serves good food and doesn’t require us to reset the wireless connection, which is always a painful and long-winded affair on our little Asus. Later we return for dinner primarily because we want to watch the performance of Apsara dancing that they put on nightly in the upstairs restaurant.
Traditional Khmer classical dance is also known as Apsara dance after one of the most popular classical dance pieces. Perhaps more accurately described as dance-drama, each dance sequence is designed to tell a story. Apsara dance has been a part of Khmer culture for over a millennium as the innumerable carvings of Apsara dancers on the walls of the Angkor temples bear witness. There are four types of classical dance: shadow theatre, folk, classical and masked. For the price of a light dinner and a jug of barcadi and coke we are able to sit back and enjoy some very graceful and incredibly controlled dances in the classical and folklore styles.
The classical dance is inspired by the Reamaker (the Cambodian version of the Ramayana). With exquisitely ornate costumes. it is a grounded, delicate dance with slow, small, but precise flowing movements, arched back and feet, fingers flexed back and coded facial expressions. The folk dances tell stories of everyday rural life and we watch, among several, the Fishing Dance and the Good Harvest Dance. For these latter the costumes are less elaborate, there are male and female dancers and the movements less precise and more dynamic and free-flowing. A real delight!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_classical_dance