Hour after hour

Nine hours of Asian cultural education might seem excessive. But it was all worth it to see the break-dancing monkeys.

For some reason, the campus was saturated with Asian events this weekend. It began on Friday night with the Graduate Student Association movie about Tibet (very long, but Martin Sheen's narrative goodness made it all worth it). Then the Sikh dancing festival at the HUB. And then, on Saturday, the "Khmer Transcendence" event.

As I walked in, I got a little nervous -- perhaps it was deja vu from the Korean variety show two weeks ago. The program was a full 12 pages long. But when I saw such features as a Cambodian version of "Irreplaceable" and "SWVA POL with American Break Dance," I knew I had to hang around.

The show began with some traditional Cambodian dances. Some of them ran more than 10 minutes each, but their pointy hats and sequined costumes sent my brain into sparkle overload for the duration.

Then came a Cambodian version of America's Next Top odel (the prize was a year's supply of mangoes and a 40-pound bag of rice), a Cambodian conversation (I thought I had memorized how to ask a girl out in the Khmer language, but the phrase quickly devolved in my memory into the Hawaiian "Mele Kalikimaka") and at last, the break dancing song.

The program introduced the dance: "In Cambodian legend, monkeys always fight evil; in fact they are army soldiers." And indeed, those monkey-masked men did look ready for some kung-fu fighting action when they crawled onto the stage. They began with an interpretative dance accompanied by traditional Cambodian instruments, but that music soon faded away in favor of a pounding bass. And the break dancing began.

Back flips. Windmills. Somersaults. All while wearing money masks. I still didn't understand what Cambodian monkeys have to do with break dancing, but I must concede that it was pretty cool.

At 1 a.m., the Cambodian festival finally ended - bringing my total hours of Asian culture for the weekend to six and a half hours.