LYON, France—From Saturday Feb. 4 until Thursday, Feb. 9, Shen Yun Performing Arts, the prestigious classical Chinese dance and music company from, New York, is taking the stage at the Amphitheatre 3000 in the city of Lyon.
There are moments which take us back to a happy time in the past or make us live again particularly strong or moving moments.
A fashion designer by profession, Ms. Botta has worked for the luxury ready-to-wear and jewelry house Biche de Bère, among others.
Reflecting on the experience, the fashion designer said, her voice still full of emotion:
‘Beyond the Technique’
In addition to her manual talent as a fashion designer, Ms. Botta says she practiced classical dance in her youth. So she shared about her understanding of Shen Yun’s classical Chinese dance.“What I found very beautiful is the highly refined technique. This show goes beyond the technique—which makes us forget the technique—to take us to an enchanting world,” she said.
It was an enchanting world which allowed the young retiree to remember her dream as a young dancer while triggering in her a very strong emotion.
“I remember ... it took me back to my own past, my work,” she said, “when I was studying dance and I dreamed of going beyond technique.”
“I had dreamed of going beyond what I was being taught, you know, the technical movements at the beginning. Practicing dance would take me away ... it’s like I would fly away in spirit a little bit, you know? I liked to go away in spirit and express that through my movements. But according to the technique I was learning, I couldn’t do that because I was in class.”
Classical Chinese dance is an ancestral dance system where the dancer expresses through his movements, his deepest emotions. Having never practiced this form, Ms. Botta could still feel and express the essence of this dance.
“When I see this show, it takes me to what I wanted in the past. It moved me enormously because it reminded me of a magnificent period of dance, of my personal history,” she said.
‘You Just Love Them’
Ms. Botta was also very appreciative of the stories told in the dance narrative, and it was a true message of love the fashion designer wanted to address to the artists of Shen Yun.“The history, obviously... with the conflicts, with the war and the desire for peace ... To see they can portray it in such a strong and beautiful way, it made me cry,” she said. “Then you love them, you just love them, it’s only love, you want to hug them.”
She particularly recalled the dance narrative describing the current persecution of Falun Gong practitioners, a traditional Chinese mind-body practice based on the principles of truth, compassion, and tolerance. Since 2001, practitioners of this discipline have been subjected to forced organ harvesting, a crime perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party.
“If we are human, we have some rationality and we safeguard the intelligence the Creator gave us ... We can see there is something wrong ... The Creator gave us our body and it is precious ... We can’t play with the body Heaven gave us! This brings back so many truths,” she said.
“It stirs up things that are deep within each of us. Who are we, and how do we try to live with each other, in community, as human beings?”
