“We’ve waited seven years to see it with my husband and we finally got to see it and it is amazing. There’s points you want to cry, it’s so intense. It’s beautiful. Absolutely worth waiting for.”

“It is just so beautiful: the music, the dancing, everything is great. And the story of course.”

“And then when they had the one scene where you see a little bit of what happens there. [The story dance ‘Unprecedented Crime,’ which tells a story about a couple being persecuted in China for their belief in the meditation practice Falun Dafa]. … It touches you a little bit because we get to see this beautiful amazing stuff and their own people can’t do that. That really hit home for me.”

“[Values that stood out for me are] the acceptance of one another and the fact they’re trying to strive for peace and unity. Especially when the soprano began to sing that song [‘The Wish’]. That was powerful because it was showing that even if they are going through a hard time, they have an inner peace. They know what their goals are and that they are trying to obtain that throughout their daily life.”

“Everything they do does have meaning and holds meaning. So knowing that the dancers are not just pretty and beautiful but that [their movements] are actually symbolic and have meaning to them just drives that point home more.”

“I have a friend who’s Hmong, so when I saw [‘The Hmong Ethnic Dance – In the Mountains’], I was really excited. This is something she taught me about but I’d never seen. And again, it’s different for me being in Canada, we do not get to see that kind of stuff. … That was a little bit of my personal life brought to stage and of appreciation for my friend.”

[The costumes were] beautiful, actually. There’s a lot of reasons I’m here. My mother is from Vietnam and she designs wedding dresses ... so I was looking at the intricacy of the designs of their dresses and how they’re put together. It is beautiful. ... The colors, the background itself—it all melds together really nicely.”