PASADENA, Calif.—Mr. Zellmer, a retired lawyer and Vietnam veteran, came with his wife, Ms. Sylvestro, and mother-in-law to the Divine Performing Arts (DPA) performance at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.
He enthusiastically endorsed the show. “Wonderful, I enjoyed every minute of it, and I will come back next year if it is presented in Los Angeles,” he said.
He learned about the show from a brochure he picked up at Cosco.
Ms. Sylvestro, whose ancestry is Italian, and is a manager for a school district, appreciated the educational qualities of the show saying, “That’s what I liked the most about it … there [are] so many things that we don’t know about each other’s culture and this [is] a very entertaining way to learn. It was beautiful. I work with counselors that work with high school students. So I wish that everybody would get to see this. Especially students from schools … that don’t understand other kinds of cultures.”
She enjoyed all the programs in the show. “They were all wonderful. They were all so colorful and so well done—just magnificent. I enjoyed the movement; I enjoyed the color. I read about everything in the brochure … before the program began,” she said.
She was pleasantly surprised there was a live orchestra. “They were magnificent; I enjoyed the combination of Western instruments and Eastern instruments. I picked that out immediately. It’s like Ah! I hear violins. I also hear some of the flutes that are very Chinese.”
Mr. Zellmer was especially touched by The Udumbara’s Bloom. “That was absolutely gorgeous … the way they depicted it. Their presentation and their translation, I really enjoyed. It touched me.”
Ms. Sylvestro was impressed with the interaction of the backdrop and the performers on stage. “That was wonderful; it really brought you into the whole thing. The music—I loved that. There was no element of it that I didn’t like and it kept you entertained … because it was so different and each of the stories were different, very interesting,” she said.
“But I really liked the one … that had to do with the sacrifice while on the path [Heaven Awaits Us Despite Persecution]. That really touched my heart.” She understood the tragedy of the persecution. “I think [the program depicts it] well in the sense that it … did it realistically simple, so you get the message, but it left you with hope.”
She found the synchronized precision of the dancers and the concept of the group being more important than the individual different from how Westerners are used to thinking. “I know that there were individuals who showed their talent, but most of the time they were all synchronized. That really stood out for me,” she said.
The Epoch Times is a proud sponsor of the Divine Performing Arts International Tour.
For more information, please see divineperformingarts.org
