Not only was there dance, but there was dinner!
(Watermelon and dragon fruit. Fruit was a common dessert. I found I could not get enough of dragon fruit.)
Fisherman's Dance
"This rural entertainment dance is a lesson of love and courtesy. It depicts, while exaggerating them, boys' and girls' attitude to love and courtship. The dance shows a tenacious and mischievious boy courting a shy and earnest young girl."
Apsaras Ballet
"This ballet was performed at offering ceremonies and palace celebrations in the Angkorian era. The Apsaras, half-woman half-goddesses, are heavenly dancers. Their circular movements and poised motions, the litheness of their gestures, symbolize their hovering between the cosmos and earth."
A complete cultural experience. I think they have a name for that but I'm not sure what it is. Another fascinating aspect about the traditional dance is the costuming, which is actually traditional dress. It's a shame that following global trends tend to phase out cultural diversity.
ReplyDeleteI've never tasted dragon fruit. I'm not even sure I could find it around here. Did you come across it during your grocery produce adventure?
Leigh, the really fascinating thing to me is that one can see these postures replicated in some cases on the temples of Angkor Wat, so they have a real historical background as well. The same with the costuming as well.
DeleteIt is a mystery to me how "diversity" is such a buzz word, yet people, cultures, and countries rush to become "Western".
I actually did come across Dragon Fruit at Produce (A)Isle. It was considered a tropical fruit (e.g., exotic). I would have never thought to try one.
Dragon fruit plantations are quite easy to pick out in the Philippines where they raise a lot of it. There is always a post sunk in the ground with a cross brace on it and an old use tire laid onto the brace so it is the tread of the tire is parallel to the ground all around it. They then train the "vines" of the dragon fruit up and over the tire so it drapes all around it's circumference. I will see field after field full of these posts, used tires and dragon fruit plants.
ReplyDeleteHow interesting Ed! I had no idea the were grown on vines at all as we did not see any of that kind of agriculture.
DeleteIt isn't really a vine which is why I used quotation marks. It is sort of a long slender cacti "leaf" that continues growing from the end making it longer. Oddly enough, there is a YouTube channel I sometimes watch of a person who grows things in front of time lapse cameras. It is immensely relaxing and rewarding. They also have done a dragonfruit short video of one growing over 1.5 years. Enjoy!
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYmQ39kboGw
Learned more about Dragon fruit in three minutes here than I ever knew TB, thanks to this blog and fellow readers.
ReplyDeleteYou are welcome Nylon12. I learned more about fruit on this trip than I probably had in the last 20 years.
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