‘It’s like a sneak peek into the Chinese culture,’ Says Actor

Divine Performing Arts stopped at Radio City Music Hall for four shows of their Chinese New Year Splendor...
‘It’s like a sneak peek into the Chinese culture,’ Says Actor
Members of audience watch the Divine Performing Arts Chinese New Year Splendor at Radio City Music Hall. (The Epoch Times)
1/25/2009
Updated:
10/1/2015
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Members of audience watch the Divine Performing Arts Chinese New Year Splendor at Radio City Music Hall.  (The Epoch Times)
NEW YORK—Divine Performing Arts stopped at Radio City Music Hall for four shows of their Chinese New Year Splendor this weekend as part of an 80-city wide world tour.

Actor and vineyard owner, Mr. Caruso, came to see the show and said that he was very impressed. For him, a Chinese cultural show was a new experience.

“It’s like a sneak peek into the Chinese culture which I’m not very familiar with,” said Caruso, “very entertaining and very educational for me.”

Divine Performing Arts takes its inspiration from 5,000 years of Chinese civilization. Many of its dances are based on the country’s amazing wealth of myths, legends and historical stories.

In addition to learning about Chinese culture, Caruso, having studied music, paid close attention to the orchestra and its instruments.

“I was very interested in the orchestra“, he said. ”My favorite so far is called ‘hope’ [erhu]. That was really, really nice. ‘I want to look more into that’, I remember thinking. I love it, I think it’s great.”

The erhu is China’s two-stringed violin, an instrument with a hauntingly beautiful sound and surprising range.

The show had a lot to offer, including an animated background accompanying each piece. Caruso shared his thoughts on this.

“What I really love is the background, actually what they’ve done with the digital work. I think it ties in very well with all the dancing on the stage. I’m going away with it. I love the colors and the dancing.”

Caruso tried to identify the differences between classical Chinese dance and other dance systems.

“It is a little different. I was trying to think why it is different. And I think it is a lot of graceful hand motions like the spinning. It’s weird to describe because it sounds like all other dances but it definitely is unique. And I was trying to figure that out.”

The unique art of Chinese dance that we know today, with its impressive scale and system, is the product of generations of dancers’ many years of artistic experience combined with their refining, reorganizing, and reworking of the art form.

  For more information visit www.divineperformingarts.org 
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