The king turned out to be a regular guy, not only leaving his seat in the presidential box to congratulate and applaud the performers, but bringing down the house with a final bow to the audience. What most of the crowd didn’t know was that the king had also attended rehearsal that afternoon, encouraging the performers and working out the logistics of joining them onstage.

It was a refreshing departure from the usual royal visit to Prague, when a glimpse of a king or queen or president darting in and out of a chauffeured limo is all the public ever gets. King Norodom also showed the common touch at a reception afterward, shaking hands and posing for photos with about 150 friends and admirers who mobbed him like he was a movie star.

The unusual profile of the king’s visit stemmed from the fact that he lived here for 13 years (from the age of 8 to 21), during which he studied at the Prague Dance Conservatoire. Much of his time during last week’s visit was spent catching up with old classmates and teachers, including one elderly woman he visited at home because she’s too frail to go out anymore. The feeling was mutual; at the reception, Conservatoire officials presented King Norodom with copies of his old school reports, replacements for originals that were lost in the Khmer Rouge purges.

Current Conservatoire students danced the first third of the Friday night program, mostly in traditional costume pieces that included a sweeter-than-sweet opening with five little girls carrying signs that spelled out the king’s name. The final third featured adult dancers from the National Theater stages in Prague and Brno, doing competent but fairly routine excerpts from well-known ballets.

The middle third of the program was as exotic as anything that’s appeared at the National Theater since the Forman brothers brought in a horse for their production of Beauty and the Beast. A total of 13 Cambodian dancers in full regalia that included improbably tall, gravity-defying headwear performed stories of the gods and goddesses to music from another planet — or at least, wildly foreign to Western ears. Cambodian dance is all about gestures, and it was hypnotic watching the women weave narratives with their hands bent in seemingly impossible positions.

Usually when a dignitary takes bows with the performers it’s because he’s got a giant ego or such deep pockets that the house will do anything to court his financial support. But King Norodom is no dilettante, nor was Friday his first appearance on the National Theater stage. He danced there in The Nutcracker as a child, portraying the title character in the ballet.

“He was so happy — you could just see him shining to be back on that stage,” says Renata Sabongui, the Prague arts entrepreneur who put together (and funded much of) Friday’s performance. “It was like a dream come true for him. One person who’s worked at the National Theater for 40 years told me he’s never seen anything like it.”