SHEN YUN PERFORMING ARTS REVIEWS

Shen Yun Shows That ‘We Live For The Truth’ Says Company Owner

Feb 26, 2023
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Shen Yun Shows That ‘We Live For The Truth’ Says Company Owner
Doug Gallwas (L) with his wife, Patti, and other family members at Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Orpheum Theatre on Feb. 25 (Sherry Dong/The Epoch Times)

MINNEAPOLIS—Owner of GT Financial Advisor Doug Gallwas watched Shen Yun Performing Arts at the Orpheum Theatre on Feb. 25. Mr. Gallwas said that he had watched the Shen Yun “12, 13 years ago and it was great, but this was more meaningful with modern times and the way things are going.

“They did a great job depicting independence and the wonderful artistic abilities of everything this culture is bringing to us,” said Mr. Gallwas. “I was moved tonight. It was very good.”

Based in New York, Shen Yun was founded in 2006 by leading Chinese artists and quickly became the world’s premier classical Chinese dance and music company. Shen Yun’s mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture.

Mr. Gallwas said he was moved by “the honesty of the presentations and the individualistic portrayals of different cultures within China and different ideas, and yet it was one show.”

Mr. Gallwas was also impressed by Shen Yun’s live orchestra. As someone with experience in playing music, Mr. Gallwas was able to recognize how difficult it could be.

“The way they bring everything together with their orchestra pit and the music and everything is unbelievable,” said Mr. Gallwas. “They can present something visually that captures so quickly how I feel individually.”

Mr. Gallwas felt inspired by the message he saw in Shen Yun’s performance.

“These are troubled times that we live in, and sometimes we need different perspectives and different cultures to come to us and talk about [it],” he said.  “They talked about grief. They talked about sadness. They talked about happiness and all these things. But through it all—the human heart prevailed, right? And that’s what they were telling me tonight … We just have to kind of work together, live, think, and move forward. It was very inspirational.”

“I do think that sometimes we’re not here for ourselves,” Mr. Gallwas added. “We’re here for a greater purpose, right? There’s a reason we’re all a part of this. Maybe we don’t know it now. Maybe we won’t know it till the end, right?”

Mr. Gallwas said he believed the greater purpose to be “the continuation of life. The continuation of truth. The continuation of what we are.”

Shen Yun’s program includes songs performed in the bel canto style. As a man of religion, Mr. Gallwas agreed with the song lyrics, which urged the audience to keep their faith in the Creator.

“We need to keep our faith in the truth, because that is what heavenly is,” he said. “Heavenly is truth.”

Mr. Gallwas shared that he believed in the importance of truth as being central to all religions and that Shen Yun presented the same values.
“We must believe in truth, that all of us can live in happiness together if we have truth because, with truth, we can adjudicate everything amongst us. We can sort things out. So it’s about honesty and truth. It’s about believing that we’re here for a reason, and there’s a higher purpose, and that reason is truth.”
“We live for the truth, and I think [Shen Yun] showed that to me.”
Reporting by Sherry Dong and Wandi Zhu.

The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of Shen Yun Performing Arts. We have covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.

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