Shen Yun ‘Incredible,’ Says Arts Council Director

MISSISSAUGA, Canada—As executive director of the Mississauga Arts Council, Linda Thomas has seen a lot of performing arts, but Saturday afternoon’s presentation by Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Living Arts Centre left her with glowing praise.

“It’s an incredible show. It’s all-encompassing, it actually takes in so many different disciplines. It’s got the music side of it, it’s got the dance side of it, it’s got the video side of it and then incorporating it all together is a very unique presentation of, I guess, certainly a spiritual message,” she said.

“It’s deep. If you take the time to really watch and take in what’s being presented, there’s very much a spiritual aspect around it and that’s really a nice thought to share.”

Shen Yun was founded on a mission to revive China’s 5,000 years of divinely inspired traditional culture, a heritage rooted in values like compassion, reverence for the divine, and wisdom. After 60 years of communist rule in China, particularly the decade-long Cultural Revolution, traditional Chinese culture is all but extinct in China, notes Shen Yun’s website.

“Today, on the surface, the Chinese Communist Party claims to be reviving traditional Chinese culture. But no matter how its efforts are framed, they are ineffectual. For the Chinese Communist Party removes the cultural essence of respect for the divine, thereby extracting the heart and soul of traditional Chinese culture,” the website says.

The Mississauga Arts Council works to connect artists within the community, both grassroots and professional, with opportunities to further the arts. These include helping with the marketing side of the arts, to business development, networking opportunities, and seminars or workshops to advance and engage local artists.

In her role, Ms. Thomas said she has seen a lot of performing arts and is a professional artist herself, playing the French Horn with a 50-piece orchestra.

“It’s been a really interesting experience,” she said of her afternoon listening to Shen Yun’s unique orchestra, adding that from her Row C she got a peek into the orchestra pit.

She said she enjoyed the combination of classical Chinese and Western instruments, particularly the sound of the suona, a type of flute.

“I just love that. … It’s just the interwoven melodies between the different instruments,” she said.

“Maybe it’s because I’m a musician myself that I’m very much aware of the orchestra. Having said that though, the way the whole production is put together, it kind of fades in the background and becomes part of the whole, so you don’t necessarily pick out the orchestra, the dancers, the back screen—it becomes part of the experience as a whole and that’s what I like about it.”

“Very good musicians,” she noted.

Shen Yun’s digital projections extend the range of the stage to sometimes heavenly realms with vividly animated backdrops, something that also impressed Ms. Thomas.

“I certainly love the way the dancers kind of come out of the screen and go back in, that’s really unique. It’s a great show,” she said.

Shen Yun stages mainly classical Chinese dance, a discipline passed down through China’s imperial courts, dynasty after dynasty. Ms. Thomas said the dancers were impressive in how easy they made it look to perform the sometimes highly technical and emotive dances.

“I know that the dance moves that they’re doing are not easy, and being so close—sometime it’s not always good to be close because then you can see the strain on their faces. But there’s none of that going on here tonight. I mean, they’re not showing any sort of effort whatsoever and that’s what’s incredible about it. I’m impressed, I’m really impressed.”

She was also taken with the colourful costumes worn by the performers and remarked that they must have been specially designed to facilitate the rapid costume changes for each piece.

“Beautiful use of costumes as part of the performance, with the long sleeves and the scarves and the flowers. It’s great. Because it all becomes part of the messages being [imparted] by the artists.”

In the dance, “Sleeves of Silk,” the female dancers perform in so-called water sleeves, long ribbon-like lengths of silk that extend the dancers arms and linger in the air like a visual echo of each movement.

New York-based Shen Yun has three equally large companies touring the world. Shen Yun Performing Arts International Company will stage two more shows in Mississauga before leaving Canada until it returns for shows in the West in the spring.

For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts.