COSTA MESA, Calif.—Lucille Kring, Mayor Pro Tem of Anaheim, said she was absolutely blown away by Shen Yun Performing Arts on Sunday evening at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts.
“This is the most beautiful event I have ever seen in my entire life,” said Mrs. Kring, also a former musician, who attended the performance with her husband Ron Kring, a business consultant.
“The music and the dances and the choreography, you cannot ask for anything more. It is professional, it is lively, it is sensational,” she said. “Everything was so perfect… It is perfection above perfection.”
“This is fabulous,” agreed Mr. Kring. “The music is so relaxing. I can just feel the tension melt away from my muscles. The dancing is perfect, and you feel the joy in the dance.”
Every year, Shen Yun tours the world with an all-new full-length production, celebrating 5,000 years of true, divinely-inspired Chinese culture through the universal language of music and dance.
Ancient myths and legends, traditional ethnic dances, and modern-day tales of bravery come to life on stage, accompanied by the unique Shen Yun orchestra, which includes both Eastern and Western instruments. Instrumental and vocal soloists are also interspersed throughout the performance.
Mrs. Kring said the dancers were spectacular, and she was inspired to start taking dance lessons herself. She also said she used to play the trumpet in an orchestra, and before that she learned piano and the organ.
“I think the musicians are top-notch,” she said. “The tenor was sensational… He broke my heart, because he is singing from the bottom of his heart.”
The Mayor Pro Tem could read the lyrics translated into English from Chinese on the backdrop behind the singer, and as a spiritual person, she loved the words that spoke of the divine and about how people come from heaven and long to go back.
“It is so uplifting. It is heart-warming,” she said. “They just are in my heart space.”
A pair of bilingual emcees introduce each piece during the Shen Yun performance, helping the audience better understand the traditional and contemporary Chinese tales.
“The stories are phenomenal,” said Mrs. Kring. “Each vignette spoke to a different character, spoke to different things that would fill our hearts.”
Mrs. Kring especially enjoyed a dance piece called “The Steadfast Heart,” in which a wife’s husband is arrested for holding up a banner that reads, “Falun Dafa is good.” He endures brutal torture while in jail and returns a broken man, however, a miracle revives his spirit once again.
“That is so beautiful, because they did not give up their beliefs,” said Mrs. Kring. “They believe in freedom, and they stuck with it, and they ended it up being free.”
A Shen Yun performance includes several references to the spiritual persecution of groups such as Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, in China today. Practitioners have been harassed, detained, and jailed, their possessions taken, and their livelihoods destroyed since 1999. Many have even lost their lives.
“I commend the Shen Yun dance company for having the courage to speak [out about] this message to the world,” Mr. Kring said. “The fact that this artistry cannot be seen in China, where this beauty is suppressed, people are oppressed, and I thank you for bringing this message to us.”
Shen Yun indeed cannot be seen in China, as the couple learned during the performance. Its performers have even been harassed in other countries around the world, but Shen Yun continues to grow and thrive.
“My heart breaks that these dancers cannot express themselves in their homeland,” said Mr. Kring. “I feel that their desire is to go home and dance again.”
Mrs. Kring again reiterated her love of the performance, and that the beauty of Shen Yun is simply beyond belief. She thanked the people responsible for bringing the performance to Orange County from the bottom of her heart. She said she would tell everybody that when Shen Yun comes, they must get a ticket, for they will be thrilled to attend.
“The whole thing is so miraculous,” she said. “I will never forget this performance.”
Reporting by NTD Television and Sarah Le
New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has four touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. For more information, visit Shen Yun Performing Arts.
Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time. We have proudly covered audience reactions since Shen Yun’s inception in 2006.
