Dancing queens

It is a truth universally acknowledged that male dancers are generally gay. This I have on good authority - from a female dancer friend of mine whose love life would probably have been more fruitful had she made different career choices.

This rule would seem to hold true, even in Laos, a land where homosexuality is still illegal. The lure of the Lao Traditional Show next door proved too strong to endure, and precisely one other falang and I gathered in an enormous hall for an hour's performance of folk dance and song. The series of dances depicted wooings of beautiful, serene women by utterly implausible and hugely camp male protagonists, more made-up and posing than their lovers. Come the compulsory audience participation section at the end, the female dancers giggled in excrutiating embarrassment, but the beaming gentlemen were more than happy to show me precisely what to do with my hands.

Nevertheless, the show was great fun, and I should probably be grateful it exists at all given Laos' Communist Party's fondness for marginalising pre-1975 history.