New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts will conclude its 2012 World Tour engagements in Florida with three performances at the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa on March 3 and 4. With just a few days before curtain time, all performances are fast approaching sold-out status.
Shen Yun performed four shows at the Broward Center for Performing Arts, in Fort Lauderdale, Feb. 10–12. This is Shen Yun’s fifth consecutive year to perform in South Florida.
As theatergoers await Shen Yun’s arrival on Florida’s West Coast, federal, state, and local officials sent letters welcoming Shen Yun’s return to the Tampa Bay region. The company last performed in the area in 2010, at the Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg.
Tampa Bay is a metropolitan region including the cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater, with each having a population of over 100,000 residents. Tampa Bay is the largest television market in the state.
Many of Tampa’s cultural centers, including the Straz Center, are located downtown along the Hillsborough River. The U.S. Census Bureau recently named the Tampa area one of the top five most diverse, integrated urban areas in the country, and American Style Magazine recognized Tampa as a “Top Arts Destination.”
‘Human Dignity and Virtue’
Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, welcomed Shen Yun to the metropolitan area: “Celebrating the excellence and grandeur of classical Chinese dance and music, Shen Yun endeavors to renew a cultural tradition that honors human dignity and virtue.”
The Shen Yun website describes a Shen Yun performance as “a presentation of traditional Chinese culture as it once was: a study in grace, wisdom, and the virtues distilled from the five millennia of Chinese civilization.”
