The next part of my visit to the Sarawak Cultural Village was the cultural show at 1130am. There is a second show later in the afternoon but I wanted to the morning show to leave the afternoon clear for city exploring

Similarly I had already visited another aboriginal cultural park and performance show in Taiwan (see earlier blog http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-e ntries/londone7/24/1359811432/tpod.html ) so this was somewhat of the same.

The show began with a medley of dancers in various costume coming onto stage. The music was instrumental and the only vocals were imitating bird or owl noises.

I had hoped to film this and charged both sets of batteries but the first set died after only filming for a couple of minutes

See Video : http://youtu.be/0a5AA1CaZi0

An interesting dance was a stick one. After first tapping large poles on the ground the men laid them on the ground and started moving them while the women danced and weaved thru the moving sticks

They then raised a woman on one of the poles before making a small arch for all the women to dance under

Finally they made a giant tower which someone climbed to the top then they spun him around on his chest

Then there was an act by a couple of warriors. After first simulating hunting and firing arrows from long blowing poles they picked an audience member with braided hair who seemed like a native.

After examining her braids they tried to teach her some customs and how to blow and arrow thru the spear to pierce a balloon nearby.

The final highlight was an arabian style dance which I was able to film for a couple of minutes before the second set of batteries also died

See Video : http://youtu.be/vxbIISEIEEk

Overall I preferred the Taiwan culture show better as it was themed around the story of a romance culminating in a giant village wedding (see link above at top for blog entry).

This performance seemed too native and traditional, probably specific to Borneo, with a lot of the bird imitation voices and no vocals except for the Arabian dance at the end.

I had also seen Malaysian folk dancing in 2010 when they came to Korea at the Andong Mask Festival. Here are two videos below which I fell in love with and what I was expecting to see. These are villagers doing more bollywood style dancing, perhaps from a different region.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2dNXGlL DGQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_XXJShu 5h4

The show culminated with inviting people on stage to dance together before a final curtain call. I left somewhat disappointed from the high of watching the Taiwan culture show and expecting something similar to the Malaysian dancing I had seen before in the links posted above.