In the evening we went for dinner at a place that had traditional dancing. First was the blessing dance.
Then came the coconut dance.
This involved clacking coconut shells together.
Then came the sentiment dance, which was very long.
The boys were fighting with the girls.
They kept stealing the girl’s baskets, even though they had baskets of their own. Then the girls got mad.
Then the boys gave back the baskets and the girls fell in love with them. I’m pretty sure the moral of the story is boys are jerks but girls are stupid, so it all works out in the end.
Then came the gum-lacquer pounding dance.
This is basically a more dangerous version of jump rope.
Last was the apsara dance, where they were dressed and danced like the girls carved on the temple walls. Except that the girls carved on the temple walls do not wear shirts. So they were dressed not at all like the apsaras.
but the apsara dancer does have her feet in the proper “ridiculus” position 🙂
No, her legs are crossed. You can actually see the full legs on the carvings, and they aren’t crossed. Some of them even have knees, and they point straight forward. I don’t know why you can see the legs so clearly on the carvings because they should be under the skirt, but they just draw the skirt pattern over the leg bumps. I guess maybe they had really clingy skirts?