The unusual Cambodian circus in Siem Reap: Unmissable and unexpected entertainment

Under the darkened small top, just as the latest performance of Phare, the Cambodian circus, is about to begin, there's a minor commotion in the packed audience on the far side of the tent. A tall caucasian young man is hurriedly shuffling sideways, like some elongated crustacean, by his fellow seated audience members in an effort to reach the exit.

I diagnose a sudden onset of Siem Reap's revenge though later, after the circus is under way, the abrupt departure of this time a middle-aged caucasian male and female couple, is less explicable. Could the reason be the confronting, hardly Cirque du Soleil content of Khmer Metal, one of several shows from the repertoire of the Phare, that include displays of same-sex affections?

I admit that as a fellow audience member on this Scenic river and land excursion in Siem Reap – the closest city to the ruins of Angkor, the former capital of the ancient Khmer empire – that I, too, am a little surprised by the hard-edged Khmer Metal's themes.

But a bit like Khmer Metal itself, I'm riveted and not going anywhere and not merely because of the rousing acrobatic and comedic skills of the show's talented troupe of young Cambodians belonging to this atypical, animal-free circus, as a whole.

Along with sexual mores, Phare itself, after all, also confronts important historical and contemporary traumas that afflict Cambodians, both young and old. These themes include the nagging legacy of war and poverty that pervades this poor, corruption-ridden land whose GDP represents a fraction of your average US multinational.

Oh, if only that aforementioned departing couple had paused to understand the events that had led to Phare's formation. During the Khmer Rouge regime's genocidal reign in the 1970s, circus performances were verboten, as were most, if not all, forms of human expression.

It wasn't until the end of the subsequent Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia that some semblance of normal existence could resume and among the refugees returning to the country were a group of young Cambodians who had been taught by a French charity-worker how to use the arts to help heal their traumas.

By 1994, based on these teachings, these nine returnees established a school, the Association Phare Ponleu Selpak ("Brightness of Art") in Battambang, Cambodia's third biggest city about 200 kilometres south-west of Siem Reap, founded to bring salvation through culture to the province's diminished youth.

In 2013, the group formed the non-profit Phare, The Cambodian Circus, a troupe composed of trapeze artists, jugglers, contortionists, acrobats, fire-eaters, musicians and dancers.