Katia Le Palec is a teacher of qi gong, fan tai chi, and tai chi chuan in Saint-Nazaire and Guérande. She found the performance “magnificent” especially since the ideas of well-being and the return to self is essential to her.
“I am sensitive to it because there is a lot of fluidity, lightness and colors! It’s enjoyable, you get carried away,” she said.
“I love Taoism, I love Lao Tzu and I especially love this connection to Earth and Heaven, of Heaven, Earth, and humankind.”
Ms. Le Palec believes the show allows us “to remain in the beautiful and in the creativity, to remain in the singularity, the artistic side... this is food for our soul.”
Pascal Guégan, a company director, wanted to offer the Shen Yun experience to his daughter, Anouk, for her birthday. They came from Concarneau to attend Shen Yun.
“I feel peace, I feel a great happiness in me!” he said.
“This show is incredibly rich in the sense that it is of high quality. There is a lot of color and a lot of technique. The choreography is executed to the millimeter. To me, it shows a very high standard of professionalism!”
Christophe de Gouttes, a retired Lieutenant General, felt “transported to China.”
“It’s really beautiful, it’s magical,” he said. “In fact, the performances are linked together, are very diversified ... Lots of costumes, lights, dances, music. It’s really magical!”
He, too, was sensitive to this connection to the divine: “There is a rather present reference to the Creator, which is rather surprising because we thought that the Chinese people were really very pragmatic and detached from spirituality. And we realize that, in fact, it has remained in the popular culture.”
Since it came to power in 1949, “the Chinese Communist Party has treated traditional culture as a threat to its rule,” Shen Yun explains. “Through campaigns like the Cultural Revolution, it has systematically uprooted traditional beliefs and destroyed ancient treasures, bringing 5,000 years of civilization to the brink of extinction.”
Mr. de Gouttes found the spirituality carried forth very interesting.
“I am a Christian and there are a lot of references which I find very similar to the one in Christianity,” he shared.