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'It was really beautiful,' said Ms. Spiegler. (NTDTV)
WASHINGTON—Ms. Spiegler, the director of City Dance Ensemble from the Washington area attended Divine Performing Arts (DPA) on Feb. 12, and expressed her admiration of the performance whole-heartedly. The show was held at the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, D.C.
“My experience with this show is really wonderful on many levels," she said, elaborating on how she enjoyed the traditional instruments.
DPA features a live orchestra with Western and Chinese classical music, drawing on traditions from both art forms and uses Western music as the backdrop. The dancers then respond and interact with the music as it is being played.
Ms. Spiegler also was enthusiastic about the artistry encapsulated in the dance, saying that it was "spectacular."
Furthermore, she found the the stories told through dance gave her an impression of what the "breadth of Chinese culture is."
She said, "The depth of the message and messages that I got in watching the show. It was really beautiful."
Through classical Chinese dance, the performers of DPA present the culture of China's 5,000 years. With its numerous movements, flips, turns, and rolls, in classical Chinese dance, the dancer "is thus capable of not only portraying a given figure’s disposition or mood, but even the vivid expressions unique to a certain age, whatever the land or time," according to the DPA website.
“I can really see that it's deeply embedded in technique, but also there's an expressiveness—the traditional sense of the flowers; the arms; the beautiful images of nature coming through the arms; and their positions and expressions of the face.
"But there is also this technical side with the jumps in the air; the leaps; and the stunning turns that both the men and women are doing.
"This is something that has been in the culture for thousands of years.
“It's in the body, in the spirit, and it's in the expression. Some of these young artists really moved me. The dance about persecution [Dignity and Compassion] was particularly strong," she said.
Dignity and Compassion is a performance that takes place in modern-day China where a practitioner of an ancient form of meditation known as Falun Dafa, which is currently persecuted in China, is nearly persecuted to death.
Ms. Spiegler felt that this dance was particularly moving because "In the end, somehow, there was a resolution, that was very positive, and in the end there was hope. Hope is a good thing."
She also was at one time a dancer and was also involved with the directing and choreographical aspects of performing arts. The show she said was "exciting" because there were "so many young talents."
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of The Divine Performing Arts 2009 World Tour.
For more information please see divineperformingarts.org
NTDTV contributed to this report
