MINNEAPOLIS—“I thought it was great,” said Roger Seaman about Shen Yun Performing Arts New York Company’s performance at Minneapolis’s Orpheum Theatre on Feb. 23.
Shen Yun’s mission is to revitalize traditional Chinese culture, 5,000 years of divinely inspired culture to be exact. It does so with story-based dancing accompanied by orchestral music, opera-style vocalists, and digital backdrops that seem to interact with the dancers.
“Very understandable with no lyrics, not [many] words, but very understandable,” said Mr. Seaman.
It was the entire presentation of dancing and the interpretation of those dances, he explains, that made it so understandable.
“China was once known as Shen Zhou, The Divine Land. This profound name describes a land where deities and mortals coexisted, and a belief that the divine transmitted a rich culture to the people of the earth,” states the Shen Yun website.
“For thousands of years, Buddhist, Taoist, and other disciplines were at the heart of society. Calligraphy, music, medicine, attire, and much more were said to have been passed down from the heavens.”
The understandings that Mr. Seaman took away from seeing Shen Yun this evening includes “the permeating concept of man existing before coming here, developing here, and then returning to his gods … I enjoyed that part of it.”
The Shen Yun Performing Arts New York Company Orchestra creates a dramatic sound with the blending of two great classical music traditions with the use of Western and Chinese instruments, the website states.
Mr. Seaman was impressed with the orchestra and noted that the combination of Western and Chinese instruments was well done. “It didn’t sound like a b c, it sounded like a&b,” he says.
He would definitely recommend Shen Yun to family and friends and would tell them, “Go prepared to enjoy it, and have an open mind.”
Reporting by Valerie Avore and Cat Rooney.
New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts has three touring companies that perform simultaneously around the world. For more information, visit ShenYunPerformingArts.org
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