The Phare Circus!

Today, we opted for an evening at the circus! 

9 young men returning in 1994 to Battambong province from a refugee camp after the Khmer Rouge set up an art and music school. They wanted to help others the way drawing helped them deal with their experiences during the war. Circus became part of the curriculum and they now have over 1200 students at the school and run this professional circus as a way to employ students who want to continue with it as a career (https://pharecircus.org/).

We had no idea what to expect going in and it totally blew our minds! We arrived early and their venue turns the entire evening into an end to end experience. You enter into the shop where they had some really neat local hand made crafts both normal and circus themed.

Then into the large seating area outside the big top, where there was a variety of "street" food stands, drinks and music. We had a tasty variety of things while being entertained by some students from the school performing traditional Cambodian dance. We all continue to be amazed and mesmerized by the hand motions in this style of dance. 

Finally, it was time to enter the tent for the main show. The show was a combination of live artwork being created throughout (painting and rice art on the stage), live music, and of course the acts themselves. They were great! They had a great variety of skills on display, from hand balancing, acrobatics, tumbling, teeter board, rola bola, diablo, and juggling.

I have a soft spot for the old school hand to hand and 2/3 high routines, but surprisingly, the rola bola and diablo routines really blew us all away.  The rola bola was done on a tiny raised platform on top of the rickety little cart that the band used as their portable stage.  Regulation and insurance really have a way of dampening the fun back home...

The show was awesome, culminating in the assembly of several freshlypainted canvasses into a huge mural followed by a meet and greet with the performers. We opted to skip the meet and greet as it was super crowded, but by that time we had been thoroughly amazed and were ready to head back to the hotel.

We took the opportunity to try our first tuktuk and it didn't disappoint!